


Dreaming Wide Awake

by LadyShaggingGodiva



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Augustine - Freeform, Call Outs - No Bashing, F/M, Foreknowledge, Gen, Grimm lore, I make up my own lore, No Salvatore Love Triangle, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Supernatural Lore, The Magicians magic, mentoring, oc-insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24933883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShaggingGodiva/pseuds/LadyShaggingGodiva
Summary: Casey Shannon decides to change something drastic on May 23rd, 2009. She then stays through the fall-out.
Relationships: Stefan Salvatore/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 49





	1. mayday, mayday

**Author's Note:**

> More tags/characters will be added as I go. 
> 
> Post-precognitive OC, canon divergences, references to drug use, cursing, violence, lime-y sexual content. 
> 
> I'm ignoring some later-seasons canon. Katherine is Stefan's first love (though terribly problematic saying 'first love' with the whole compulsion thing) and canon in season 5 onward is negotiable.

_"The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage." – Jack London_

**chapter one: mayday, mayday**

She has a vision of Grayson Gilbert.

In it, Miranda is dead beside him. Her loose white shirt near-ethereal as it reflects the dim flicker of headlights, as they sink. Grayson is reaching for his seatbelt before they hit the lakebed, his other no longer bracing against the steering wheel but grasping for Miranda's shoulder. Her head lolled, long, dark hair obscuring the fatal twist in her neck.

The water pours into the cab, cold and bracing, as his grip loses its strength, as his eyes leave his wife for Elena, similarly slumped, similarly long, dark hair, shrouding her face.

Only, Elena moans, comes to with the seatbelt tight, layered over cracked ribs. Elena focuses him.

He fights the door, sealed by the force of the water pressing inward, then the window, elbow swinging and bouncing off the glass hard enough to bruise the bone.

Elena extends her hand as far as she can reach, too short to touch, as she begs him to stop, voice choking off as the torrent of water reaches its end, and they’re submerged. Soundlessly she keeps crying out. He wants to rescue them both, her above all, and she wants only the reassurance of not being alone – of dying alone – as her last breath tightens in her lungs.

On this side, there’s nothing he can do, and in the gloom, there’s no one to render aid, to witness his plea. He does stop. He offers her a modicum of stillness, an illusion of peace, in that moment before her eyes slip closed.

Had he done the same, given in, he would have been saved. The vampire who swims to his door would have pulled him out, not seeing through the shadows of the backseat, for the girl whose heart is quietly lulling.

Grayson tells the vampire he recognizes as Stefan Salvatore, _no_ – not him – _save my daughter._

He dies, eyes open.

* * *

Someone gets the drop on her in Richmond.

The spell doesn't drop naturally – it takes practice to tell the difference – so she guesses it's a witch. Someone cautious enough to wait until they've reached their destination – in a field, outside the city judging by her ear – before lifting her unconsciousness. Someone without the muscle or the courtesy to carry her. Vindictive enough to drag her. Her bound wrists are stretched over her head, the rope sliced into her skin, the muscles in her shoulders aching. Her hair is a tangled riot, skin abraded, dress torn.

She stays slumped in the dirt, blinking the fog of the dispersed spell from her mind.

Her audience of one is staring down at her, tucking her phone away, putting her hand on the knife sheathed to her belt.

"Surprised?"

She turns her head to take in more of her surroundings, as if Marie is no more important than one of the trees.

"Should I tell you where we are, or do you know that at least?"

Why ask a question she already knows the answer to.

Had she still had her...abilities, her affliction, she might have woken screaming, trapped reliving the one hundred hangings and burnings that took place here. It's jolting, realizing she feels nothing at all but humid air on her skin, as if a sense – or five – have been cut off. She's been blinded, deafened, loss the sense of touch, reduced to seeing as everyone else, hearing as everyone else, feeling as everyone else.

Marie continues, in search for a reaction.

"I didn't think it would be this easy. I had planned for all kinds of contingencies, you know? if the spell wouldn't work. I thought maybe I would slip something into your drink, make it look like you were wasted, and I was your friend taking you home. I was prepared to _fight_ you," she laughs, jittery as she paces closer and then hops back, hands active. "I was so nervous you saw something in me before you _amputated_ yourself, that maybe you _knew."_

Casey pulls her bound arms down, cradles them against her chest, tries to keep her raw wrists away from the knots. "Well," she modulates her voice to be lackluster against Marie's near mania. "I'm your captive audience. Why don't you enlighten me on what we're doing here, since I don't know anything at all?"

Marie works her jaw, glaring at her surroundings before transferring the force of it down at Casey, moving closer, standing taller with each step. "Nothing? You can't guess?"

Casey blinks, for all the world, unperturbed.

"Why would I take you here? _Tonight?"_ She stresses.

She briefly glances at Marie's knife, in question. She has to mantra to herself to keep her heart slow, willing each breath to match the draw and exhale of her soundless lungs.

There're a few reasons why a witch of middling talent would take someone of magical blood, if not at her previous...denomination...to an isolated spot of powerful, consecrated grounds, on a new moon, with a ritual knife openly strapped to her belt.

"Does it all just bleed together? Do the deaths mean nothing to you?" She tilts her head, seemingly genuinely curious.

"Whose?" She asks.

Marie laughs, still smiling, relishing, when she stops. "The doppelgänger's parents."

Casey blinks.

The crash off Wickery Bridge?

It's unfathomable that...it hasn't happened yet. Hasn't happened a long time ago. She's still adjusting, relearning the linear flow of time. She's not trapped in the past one minute, then the future, while being splintered into a dozen other presents.

Thinking about it happening now is like taking her to Sarajevo and saying the Archduke is about to be shot.

This is why she’s in Mystic Falls.

"Please go on," she mutters.

"Once it's confirmed that they're dead, then...then, you can join them,” and her hand tightens upon her knife. She grasps onto that hesitation. 

"Because one has something to do with the other?" But she's extrapolating who Maria decided to be a witch-minion for. Someone who wants the doppelgänger's parents to stay dead. Someone who knew how to turn Marie but waited until Casey had underwent the ritual to approach her about this plan, because like hell she wouldn't have seen it, like hell Marie just thought of it herself. More worryingly, it's someone who knew how to stay hidden.

"Perhaps you lied," Maria shrugs, "'Til then we wait, and you won't be able to intervene."

She tilts her head back into the dirt and stares up at the dark sky.

She had guessed, by Maria's very loose supporting role in facilitating the ritual that she didn't know anything about seer magic. Anyone who could be jealous couldn't truly understand it. _Seers can't lie._ Not outright. And again, she was bound by oath that she would not change through action or inaction, through deed, or word what she has foretold. That was the Faustian bargain she made to acquire the resources to piece her sanity and lucidity together. The deal to get the visions to stop _._ The backlash of breaking that vow would...

"I couldn't even if I wanted to.”

“Guess it’s a good thing you don’t want to then,” Marie shoots back.

She laughs derisively, no longer affecting, no more side glances, as she glares at Marie head-on. “Condemnation from someone intent on murdering me? I’ve given up my magic, and _still_ , you have me bound and _still,_ you stop yourself from getting too close.”

"Don't delude yourself," Maria spits, concentrating hard before piercing her with a nerve spell that races like electricity in her veins, jerking her into a rigid seizure. “You _had_ power, now you're worthless.”

“And yet here you have me,” she chokes out.

“Don’t you realize what you’ve done by sacrificing your visons? You didn’t remove the target, you just stopped yourself from seeing it. Someone else would have gotten to you, and once they realized they couldn’t spell the knowledge out of your head or compel you they’d _break_ you. There wouldn’t be any mercy in it.”

"Oh?" She looks up at her, eyes large, staying coiled and still in the dirt "you're doing this for me then? Giving me the easy way out?"

Maria juts her chin, defensive and self-righteous.

"Just a coincidence of location? Not planning on profiting at all?"

Maria face twists. "I choose this place _for you_ , even if you don't deserve it," she gestures to the empty field. "So that you actually have hope of making it to the Other Side!"

She blinks, buries her incredulity, and that part of her that wants to argue and make her see reason and talk her way out this, because betrayal masquerading as mercy, violence affecting kindness, is _freaking lunacy._

But instead, she thinks, going to the Other Side? Like _hell._

 _“_ Want to know what I saw in you Marie?” Because there's not a soul around who didn't want to ask that of a seer.

“ _Nothing. At. All,”_ and she takes her moment to quickly, and violently, kick out.

* * *

The crash reverberates against the open water.

Splinters of white oak is strewn over the bridge, the wooden guardrail split like the wreckage of a ship.

The hairs on the back of her neck are raised, skin prickled though she isn't cold. Her heart beats like a drum as the water sloshes from the impact. She’s not a creature of magic any longer, but she imagines she can feel the resonance that rings out, calls aid to the doppelgänger. She toes off her shoes between one board and the next, keeps her hand outstretched onto the rail until she comes to the gaping wound. The red backlights descend into the murky water, near obscured under a dark, clouded sky. She's shaking from more than adrenaline, poison spiking through her bloodstream. Hopefully, the slash across her palm is bandaged well enough for the scent not to bleed though. It’s achy and numb at the same time; the fingers too stiff to make a fist. That slash is probably what saved her. Marie knew that she knew just how poisoned the blade was, had expected Casey to shy away from the knife, to falter once it connected.

She's fought lost causes before, and now she only has less to hold her back from doing something obviously stupid. 

She picks her moment, and dive off the precipice.

* * *

She's all of three feet away, treading water, as he breaks the surface.

"I've got her, you can go back," she reaches quickly for Elena's slumped form, both of her hands underwater. Vampires are more fox, more hyena, than shark. Let it obscure.

She tries to keep the weakness off her face, keep her shoulders back, her eyes clear. Someone competent and strong enough to handle this part so he can go back.

He hesitates, looking between her and Elena as she actively takes hold of her. She cuts her eyes to him, panicked that he won't make it down in time, before he dives back under, impossible to follow with his dark hair and dark clothes.

She crosses her arm over Elena's chest, shying from her bruised ribs, and tilts Elena's head back to rest on her shoulder, tries to keep them steady. She wonders, if she gets out of this, if the point of contact is damning herself under the spell. She should make for the bank, but she needs to know, needs to see Stefan break the surface with an alive Grayson Gilbert in his arms.

What if Grayson tells him to grab his wife's body – what if he doesn't know Miranda is dead – what if he gave into the water once Elena was rescued?

What if this – this terrible risk – is entirely pointless?

Stefan reaches the surface, with Grayson issuing gut wrenching coughs, in his grasp.

"Is she breathing?" Grayson chokes, immediately turning to Elena. "Is she okay?"

She almost says yes, because she knows Elena _will be_ fine, but she doesn't actually know, in this moment, if she is fine, if she's breathing.

"I can't tell," she jostles Elena's weight higher as he swims closer, pushes the strands of hair off her face, skates his fingers to the pulse of her neck.

Stefan stays outside the loose perimeter as Grayson starts to slide his arms around Elena, and they trade her weight. She's mute when she'd otherwise tell him to focus on himself, that she can take Elena's load. She keeps her face open, her movements small, surrounded by predators. She sinks incrementally, neck straining to keep from going under. 

Grayson maneuvers Elena to align her back against his chest. One hand encircles her throat as he performs something like the Heimlich maneuver. Her body jolts, spewing water. Nothing quick or miraculous happens. The doppelgänger remains unconsciousness.

"I'll get her to the bank. Do you have a cell phone? A car?"

She nods wordlessly as Grayson gathers his strength.

"Tell them Dr. Gilbert needs an ambulance for his daughter at Wickery Bridge," he instructs, waits for her immediate nod before he starts swimming backwards, Elena tightly enclosed to his chest, and his other arm on a backstroke. He doesn't head for the much closer bridge, made viable by the high-water level, and the large, jagged hole torn out of its side. Grayson instead swims for the muddy embankment, the red gloom below opening up between them. Shards of white oak drift by.

"Are you alright?" Stefan Salvatore asks her, made near stranger with his dark hair flattened against his forehead. 

She drifts slightly, blocks his view of Grayson and Elena's retreating forms. "I can manage.” She looks away, prepares herself to make a bald entreaty. “Can you help me climb up the bridge?"

He hesitates. She doesn't wait. She can't keep treading water, so she lets him decide whether to follow the person who asked for his help, or towards the doppelgänger curiosity.

She reaches the bridge first. 

She pulls in a breath in preparation before stretching to get both hands braced on to the wooden slats, the splinters pressing into her fingertips. Black veins have spider-webbed from the wound and crawled up her forearm.

She can feel Stefan's gaze, nearly feel his in-drawn breath.

She clenches her jaw tight and starts to pull herself up.

She hardly clears half of the height before she starts to fall back. Her bad arm, the poisoned arm, burns with licking fire, the nerves screaming. She cries out, _Ah!_ tears leaking as Stefan's hands catch her at the waist, keep her raised and anchored as she breathes shakily.

He asks if she's okay, but her heart is hammering in her ears. She fights the urge to slacken in his grip, to let herself sink, and instead pulls herself up on bloodless, throbbing fingers. Her elbows shake as she gets her chest flat against the bridge, crawling until her knees hit the deck. She lays there, cheek pressed against the cool saturated bridge, breath burning her upper lip. She weakly rolls onto her back and stares up at the pitch black, clouded sky. _(Is this it?)_

Stefan pulls himself up by the strength of his arms alone. She lulls her head in his direction to see he's all in shadow. Black hoodie, half-zipped, black shirt, dark jeans, and black boots that barely make a thud on the wooden slats as he climbs to his feet.

He offers her his hand. 

She doesn't want to take it. She doesn't want to move again. 

She swallows. Not here. Not yet.

She shakily stretches out her left hand, and takes his help to stand again on her bare feet. 

"Are you..." he trails off as her knees lock to keep from buckling. What adrenaline she had to get her this far is draining through a sieve.

"Thank you," she breathes, her shoulders dropping with the effort. She's cautious with her stride, notices Stefan keeps his hands slightly spread at his hips, as if waiting for her fall. He flexes them at her glance, flattens them against his jeans as he looks away, eyes pulled towards the embankment. She looks over the rail but can't spot Grayson or Elena. Nothing but water and trees. _Legolas what do your elf eyes see..._

She can only make out what's in front of her. She passes her sandals without realizing.

"I'm sure they're...fine," she broaches, muscles locked against the shivers working out of her chest. She's dripping wet, sundress uncomfortably plastered, hair heavy on her back, straining her neck. It feels like she's sweating under it all. Fevered. "He might need a moment to...explain what happened to..." she trails off, not naming Miranda, not letting on what she knows about the situation. It depends on whether Elena has gained consciousness and how forthright Grayson intends on being. She wonders, is it safe for Stefan to be alone with Grayson, to be on Grayson's radar when he now has some of his gratitude?

Stefan nods, hands flexing slightly in front of him before he stuffs them into his jacket pockets. He’s visibly retreating, into what’s been drudged up, out of the lake. He doesn’t know how much she knows about the situation, so she doesn’t expect him to voice any of the questions tumbling through his mind. The main one, she suspects, being _how is this possible?_

Stefan's eyes slid to her when they reach the asphalt, lingering on the protective way she's hunched over her arm, holding her elbow with her left hand. She doesn't realize he stops until his question comes from behind, not alongside, her.

"How badly are you hurt?"

"Hmm?" She's pulled out of her thoughts, momentarily stumped for an answer.

Everything hurts. _Her hand, her hand, her hand._ It feels like her veins are being grated. The ache sinks into her bones and sinew, the tightness in her neck makes every movement pulse, her head jack-hammering.

"A little worse for wear," she summaries.

His forehead creases.

"The wound on your hand..." he ducks his chin, sounding tentative to broach the subject, but concerned "it looks like blood poisoning."

She turns her arm up to the encroaching, spider-webbed danger. Her blue-black fingertips. She curiously watches his reaction, doesn't see the predator in it, and wonders if, to him, it smells of rot or sickness. 

"It sort-of is. Poisoned. Not as bad as it could be," she observes, based on the cut and location. But her voice is tight, doesn't reflect a shade of optimism. She doesn't know how her body will handle magic now, slow it or speed it up. There’s a threat that she’ll lose consciousness, soon. "I need to find out if Sheila Bennett is in a helping mood, I guess."

His mouth parts, but she turns away, heads for the silver Mercedes haphazardly parked and only slightly pulled into the shoulder. She slips through the open driver's door and reaches, achingly, for the cell phone in the cupholder.

The blade glints at her from the passenger seat.

Her vison spots as she dials blindly. _Accident. Wickery Bridge. One unconscious, in need of ambulance. They’re on the south embankment, no I'm not with them._ She drops the phone when she's done, takes a moment to look up at Stefan, a stride away from the open door, brows drawn tighter, arms crossed tightly over his chest.

"Sheila Bennett?" He asks.

She picks at her yellow sundress, pulling the plastered fabric away from her thighs with her fingertips.

"Magic problems require magic solutions," she shrugs "Unless I was willing to part with my arm." She makes a chopping motion with her hand, intended for the elbow joint until she realizes the blackened veins have spread higher, then she guides her fake machete to the shoulder, makes a slasher sound before dropping her shoulder as dead weight. Right now, in this moment, if someone offered amputation...

His brows have risen slightly.

"Do you often talk about magic with strangers?" He says magic with a touch of humor, a false disbelief. What he's really asking, is _why me? What do you know about me to be this honest?_

Her eyes drift to his ring. "I have an eye for jewelry."

His hand twitches, instinctively protective if she were to guess, as he gives her opposite hand a cursory glance. Neither of her two rings have a lapis lazuli stone to match, but it's a good instinct to wonder if they too are magical in nature. 

"The guy you saved, Grayson Gilbert," she inclines her head towards the lake. "He has a ring too. A Bennett talisman that protects the human wearer against supernatural death. It also tends to make the wearer act...invincible...around the supernatural."

The expression on his face is pure skepticism. “A... resurrecting...ring, that protects against supernatural death..."

"An heirloom of Jonathan Gilbert, from Emily Bennett," she recites "You might remember killing him. If you check out his gravestone, the dates are inconsistent there. It drove Samantha Gilbert mad, which led to her murdering Zachariah Salvatore in...19-teens?"

He lets the prompting hang for a moment before sighing. "1912," he corrects, scrubbing his palm over his eyes and then through his hair, causing it to spike.

"So, if you're planning on...seeking answers, interacting with him, just, be on your guard," she stresses.

His eyes scrunch slightly as he narrows his gaze thoughtfully.

Now, she expects a question about the doppelgänger, a soft opener on why she thinks he would seek out Grayson, or a question on why she happened to be parked here as their car went over the bridge. She waits, resting the side of her face against the head rest, knees pulled up into a huddle. The leather slicks with the water still dripping from her, and her hair feels water-sealed to the side of her face. It's itchy, but she doesn't have the energy to move it.

"How serious is it?" He lifts his chin slightly, arms crossed again at his chest, shoulders hunkered inward, as he moves closer.

"Deadly," she mumbles.

His arms loosen, and his eyes track the black spiderweb veins creeping up her arm to her bicep. "Why did you jump in?"

She attempts a shrug, eyes closing. "Took a gamble.”

"On your life?" He asks solemnly.

"Can't always pick the stakes," she declares ruefully.

"And you don't want to risk vampire blood?" He asks, both questioning and understanding.

She blinks, sluggish to catch the implication. "Oh," the sound escapes her, head tilting back to look up at him. "Not in the way you think." She pauses, brow tight. "You know how...there's some things your blood can't cure?” She smiles weakly. He doesn’t dispute that vampire blood isn’t the be-all-end-all cure, so he must have experience. “It’s not pride...or... _judgment_...that keeps me from asking.”

"But Sheila Bennett can help you?"

“I hope so.” And if not...

She bows her chin to her knee. Stefan watches her, hears fatigue and resignation in her voice.

"You know," he starts slowly "saving two people from drowning... it's a nice final act, if you don't believe you can be cured."

She minutely shakes her head, thinking back to Marie’s words ‘good thing you don’t want to then’. She hadn’t wanted to, hadn’t given it a thought until she was drop-kicked into Mystic Falls. "We must be remembering who did the saving differently."

He make a noise in his throat, not quite a hum or a sigh. She's too out of it to interpret. “Just one more question," he broaches.

"Shoot," she offers, against the the whirl of approaching sirens. 

"What are you?"

Now she sighs. “It’s...fair that I answer that. I'm just not sure how anymore,” she murmurs, half to herself.

The lights, blue and red, flash behind her eyelids as the ambulance arrives.

She blinks, twitching as Stefan pulls a soaked material around her shoulders. She reaches for it, realizes it’s his jacket. "I imagine you still want to avoid the hospital," he says in an undertone, arranging the sleeve to drape over her arm.

"Are you sure you _can_ make it to Sheila's house?"

"I... don’t actually know where it is," she admits quietly.

His gaze traps hers, close enough, even in the dark, for her to make out the dark green in his eyes, the outline of his dark lashes. He doesn't say anything, but it feels like he understands something more to her answer. She had realized she couldn’t make it herself before she had even pulled herself up on the bridge. He pulls the jacket around her, until it meets in the front, then leans back, eyes on the squad car and ambulance. "It's probably best if you move to the passenger seat then."

He approaches the two EMTs and the officer getting out of their vehicles. Whether they see her or not, whether Stefan can cover for her, she decides to try, carefully moving the sheathed dagger to the floorboard, and then shuffling across the center console. She forces her eyes to stay open once she's situated, searching for Stefan's form, trying to read the body language of the EMT he's pulled to the side. She's dizzy, doesn't know how many times she's called herself to focus.

She jolts when he opens the driver's door, realizes she's been floating between conscious and unconsciousness, periodically shaking to keep from going under.

"How long has it...?" she turns her face into her shoulder to cough.

"Not long," he starts the engine, the keys already dangling from the ignition. "I had to convince them it was better for me to take you home."

And it worked?

"I guess it helps this is a one ambulance town," she murmurs, blinking quickly. _Focus, focus, focus._

"I might have also compelled them," he admits, almost testing.

She peeks over at him as he smoothly puts the car into a u-turn. "I thought you couldn't compel with an animal diet," lucky the police force wasn't yet on vervain. 

His brows furrow, and he changes his grip on the steering wheel. "I... can. It's just not as strong, and as long as I'm not...forcing someone to do something they aren't open to, it's fine."

She wonders how much of compulsion relies on the recipient’s openness, and how much can be cajoled by his demeanor, his word choice. Is it innate to his personality, that he can stretch his powers when he's weaker, or something that developed because his compulsion is weaker? 

Her thoughts tangent and worsen her headache.

“I think you just described charisma,” she rests her head against the glass.

He doesn't respond to that, but he must have looked over because his voice softens. "Hey, do you need help staying awake?"

"Definitely not," she mumbles.

"Of course not," he agrees, deadpan. "Do you mind if I use your phone?"

She blearily pulls the phone, Marie's phone, out from under her before handing it over, listens to the one-sided conversation as he asks Zach for directions to Sheila's house.

"Brown wood with a blue door," she mumbles, picturing it. She knows what the inside and outside of Bonnie's house, Sheila's house, the Boarding House, the Gilbert house, the Lockwood house, the Forbes house, the Donovan house looks like, but she doesn't know how to navigate to any of those locations. Could hardly believe she made it to the bridge at all. 

When they arrive at Sheila's house, she knows she drifted off again because she doesn't remember the car stopping, and Stefan is at the passenger side with the door open, squatting and lightly touching her face. She can feel the press on his thumb on her chin, his fingertips on her cheek.

"Your lips are turning blue," he observes somberly.

She wheezes shallowly, glazed eyes drifting to the floorboard. "Dagger. Might need ta look at it." She swallows. "Not sure I can stand this time."

"I can carry you."

* * *

She does stand. Here at least.

Her left hand stays gripped to the back of his shirt, nearly all her weight leaning against him. He turns his shoulder as if a pillar, and his right palm briefly touches her back before moving a hairsbreadth away.

The harsh florescent light is on a sensor and blankets the porch in a harsh glare as they wait.

Sheila answers the door in pajamas and a bathrobe, a disapproving twist to her lips and an evaluating glance thrown over their waterlogged appearance. She stays behind the doorway.

"And who are you?" She directs at Casey, keeping both in her sights.

"Casey Shannon," she murmurs, her left-hand tightening on the back of Stefan's shirt, unseen.

"Stefan Salvatore," he reciprocates.

"Mm-hmm."

"You might not remember me," Stefan leads politely, offering his hand, balanced as far as he can put it. "but we met in October 1969."

Sheila's lips curl, seemingly unwillingly as she stares down at his hand with raised, penciled brows, as if asking _‘sure you know what you’re doing?’_ "Yes I remember."

She trusts in her own power should it be a ploy to pull her onto the porch, so she grasps his hand.

They both turn to her once the handshake is over, waiting.

She grimaces, follows his lead, given no alternative. 

Sheila's eyes sharpen on hers, not dropping her awkwardly stretched left hand as quickly. "I'm not sure what you are, but I can feel you're in pain."

"Yes," she agrees quietly. "And in need of a flushing solution."

Her brows raise "To flush what?"

She realizes the black jacket pulled over her is in the way, so she tries shrugging it off. Stefan reaches over and pulls the fabric aside, letting Sheila see the black veins crawling up her skin. Sheila tracks them from her hand to the base of her neck.

"Poison," Sheila declares.

Stefan hands over the sheathed dagger.

Sheila studies it in a careful grasp, as if she's handling an artifact more than a weapon.

"Snake venom?" she guesses, spying the ouroboros carving on the handle.

She blinks sluggishly, more of her weight drifting into Stefan's side. "No. It's a blood poisoning spell, but the dagger is coated in werewolf venom."

The ouroboros was a typical 'I'm a servant of nature, everything in balance, all actions righteous and justified' witch motif. And misleading in case someone wanted to dispel the poison. Let them look in the wrong place. 

"Werewolf venom," Stefan murmurs under his breath.

"Try to suspend your disbelief," she whispers out of the side of her mouth.

"What have you done for it?" Sheila tilts her head curiously, watching the interplay.

Uh, bound the wound. Unintentionally, put some dirt on it.

"Pray."

Sheila's eyes narrow further, probably at the breathy, flippant quality of her response.

"Vampire blood?" She glances meaningfully to Stefan.

"Won't work," she shakes her head.

Sheila hands the dagger back to Stefan and crosses her arms. "You tried it?"

"Nooo, but werewolf venom would turn the vampire blood in my system to acid."

Sheila purses her lips. "I haven't heard of that."

Implied, as an educator and long practicing witch is that, because she hadn't heard of it, it's unlikely to be true.

"I've seen it," she answers flatly.

"Hmm."

Sheila taps her fingers against her arm, gives her a longer evaluating look. "I don't think I have the ingredients you're after."

It takes a long, incomprehensible moment for the words to register.

She just assumed that Sheila, a long alcoholic would keep flushing solutions on hand. But maybe not. It's not like it's a pleasant way to sober up, and it requires _wanting_ to be sober.

If not Sheila, she doubts anyone else has the right ingredients or know-how to prepare it in Mystic Falls.

"And there are no hidden apothecaries around here, I'm guessing?" she questions numbly.

"As far as I'm aware, I'm the only practicing witch in Mystic Falls," Sheila responds, though she can barely hear her. Stefan's hand is curled around her waist. She doesn't remember her knees buckling.

Something else. Something magic can enhance. Buy her time, open her airways, increase blood oxygen...

"Do you have...ginkgo biloba?" She grasps the first thing to come to mind.

Sheila shakes her head. "I'm sorry honey, but I haven't kept a real garden in years, and medicine has never been my area."

Stefan’s voice drifts through on a fog. "There's a stabilizing spell I saw in Bastogne." He quotes something, but she's unfamiliar with the language, and her ears are buzzing.

"Maybe," Sheila murmurs thoughtfully. "How long did it stabilize them?"

"Hours, if it was below freezing out."

"Are you sure it worked on blood poisoning?"

"Yes," Stefan answers firmly, a witness. 

"Casey," Stefan pulls her closer, his head ducking to try to catch her eyes. "Casey," he calls again, somehow farther away.

* * *

"Well, it didn't cause another seizure, and she's conscious, so I'd say it worked. For now," Sheila announces aside to Stefan, as she blinks awake, groggy, and weak, laid out on a couch.

Her head isn't quite as pounding, instead reduced to a low throb. She carefully stretches her fingers, feels that her rings have thankfully not been removed, and that her nerves sting where before she had lost feeling completely. Scale of 1 to 10? Only a 4. 

“What happened?” She wonders.

"You nearly died on my front porch, forcing me to invite a vampire into my home, and now you're still alive because of Stefan's World War Two buddy's triage spell."

There's an open first aid kit on the coffee table, and her quasi-bandage from her shift is rolled into a bloody ball. Bloodier than it was before. She blinks at it, sluggish to connect Sheila's words to meaning.

Sheila's head tilts, her tone changing at she looks down at her thoughtfully. "You were in and out of it a few times.” She pauses. “You told me I needed to start teaching Bonnie what it means to be a witch, so I don't die and leave her vulnerable to everyone who wants to use her." Sheila's thin brow raises slowly, and she leans closer. "You also said to let Bonnie know her importance. That there are better virtues than self-sacrifice."

Sheila waits for her response. 

"Oh," she answers lamely, "is that it?"

Her lips tighten, but her eyes look amused. "That's all you said to _me."_

She drags her eyes to Stefan. He tilts his chin in acknowledgment but doesn't give much away.

"And what does a non-witch with premonitions, a poisoned knife, and rescuing Grayson and Elena Gilbert have to do with each other?" Sheila interrogates.

Still working on it.

"How much time have you bought me?" She asks in return.

Sheila cocks her head, not as put out by her avoidance as she expected. "Less than a day, certainly, unless you put yourself under a stasis spell."

Sleeping Beauty spells were tricky with healthy participants. Poisoned and seizing? Hello coma.

"Thank you," she hopes she can see she means it sincerely.

Sheila nods slowly in acknowledge and doesn't look away.

"I was poisoned because I... I had a premonition about the accident, and I shared it. Someone thought I would interfere with the doppelgänger and decided to..." she inclines her chin towards her hand.

"Doppelgänger," Sheila repeats, filing it away. "And this premonition?" she broaches.

Her eyes drift to Stefan. "Stefan was meant to rescue Elena. And Grayson died at the bottom of the lake. I got there in time to take Elena so Stefan could rescue Grayson as well."

Sheila's eyes clench tight for a moment, and she takes a fortifying breath. "There are things after that girl..." she shakes her head, "and with that comet coming to pass..."

"The comet?" Stefan asks curiously when she doesn’t continue, hands clenched between his knees as he leans forward.

"One you should remember Stefan. The last time it passed over was 1864, a time of a lot of blood and carnage in Mystic Falls," Sheila shakes her head. "That comet is a sign of impending doom once again, and I fear things aim to repeat themselves."

"Magic enjoys it's poetry," she agrees, starting to reluctantly sit up on the damp couch. She tests her arm and finds the ache minimal, appreciates that it's been properly bandaged.

"You...think the comet means things are going to turn out like 1864?" Stefan questions carefully, his voice modulated.

Sheila hmms, but looks at Casey curiously. "Tell me your take on it."

Casey sits back against the armrest and rubs her forehead with the fingertips of her left hand. “Which part?” She asks ruefully. “There’s the obvious. 1864, a Forbes was Sheriff, a Lockwood was Mayor. Now, a Forbes, by marriage, is Sheriff, a Lockwood is Mayor. The Founder's Council decided to actively hunt vampires. The Founder's Council of today, with the same families, will fight vampires again with almost the same tactics. 1864 Katherine Pierce had the loyal support of a Bennett witch and the love of both Salvatore brothers. Repeat with Elena." Stefan's brows furrow.

"A son breaks his werewolf curse in 1864, also to be repeated in the same family. And..."

She debates not saying this part, but Sheila and Stefan are probably the best people to impart this knowledge to. Both of them are listening. "Emily used the comet for a spell, and with it passing again, the ward she made can be broken."

"And what was this ward for?" Sheila prompts her. Casey looks to Stefan, wondering if this is the right way to tell him. 

She continues carefully, watching his expression. "Katherine orchestrated the vampires being rounded up, to be subdued instead of staked, so they would be pushed into the church, and the church burnt" she looks away when his hands tighten, realizes it's better if she doesn't look at him so he doesn't have to control his reaction. "There's a tomb under the church where they're sealed. All of them but Katherine, who used the fire and the tomb as a double bluff so some would believe she perished and others would think she was trapped, desiccated in a tomb, unable to escape."

It's quiet for a long moment, and Stefan's head is bowed, his jaw clenched.

"So, during the last comet a tomb closes, and with the comet coming back, the tomb opens."

"And the vampires let out with it," Sheila hisses "with scores to settle."

"Yes," she agrees, because for most of them, they did. Or will. "Emily's spirit destroys the talisman, but there are people desperate to get into that tomb, and you paid the price of bringing down the spell."

Sheila stares at her piercingly before slowly nodding. She understands what price she paid.

"Vampire problems," she huffs, almost companionably.

Casey smiles slightly, glad at least to give a warning to someone sensible enough to take it. This is her thank you. Thank you for inviting Stefan. Thank you for your care. Thank you for giving me time.

She starts to climb to her feet, wary of dizziness, knowing she shouldn't push anything classified as triage. She needs to make it to Richmond. 

Sheila stands with her and offers her left hand, so Casey can shake with her uninjured one. She's surprised at the gesture, wondering what to read into it, but takes it with an equally firm grip.

"It was...interesting meeting you Casey. I would like to see you again at a more reasonable time."

She accepts the friendly chastisement, offers an ambiguous, "I'll try."

Sheila offers her hand to Stefan as well. "It was a risk offering your hand to me, and I appreciate it. Take care of yourself," she pronounces seriously, a softer, remembering smile on her lips.

"Thank you," Stefan returns softly.

Casey takes up the abandoned dagger, uneasy to be toting it again as she keeps it down at her side, and leads the way out.

"Get that wound taken care of, and let me know if you survive it," Sheila tosses in farewell, morbid if not for the spark of impishness, of some lost youth of the woman Stefan must have admired in 1969. It's comforting, in that Sheila believes she'll pull through, treats it as a certainty. Or hides the uncertainty well. 

The poison and the pain is still lying in wait.

She peeks at Stefan's reflective mood, in the soft quiet of the sleeping street, decides to lean her back against the side of the car instead of reaching for the handle, meeting his gaze when he looks over in question. _Do you want to tell me it's impossible?_

Whatever he wants to say, to ask, she wants to give him the opportunity before they part.

He joins her, half a foot from brushing shoulders as he folds his arms across his chest, dropping his shoulders and looks up at the night sky. She inclines her neck back as well, searching for something familiar. 

"Katherine's alive," he murmurs after a companionable quiet. 

She waits, doesn't confirm it, doesn't know if he's even asking her to. 

"And Damon thinks she's in the tomb. He plans to return to Mystic Falls to try to..." his rubs at his eyes, chest expanding on a sigh " _rescue_ her."

There's a wealth of history in that sigh, the frustration clearest - that Damon knew all this time and never let on, that his brother wasted 145 on a pointless quest, for a woman who doesn't deserve it. 

"And you apparently saw Damon and I replaying 1864 with Elena instead of Katherine," his jaw tightens, eyes down as his shoulders curl forward. "Her doppelgänger who lives in Mystic Falls at the time the comet is meant to pass over again, when this tomb is supposed to open."

"Life is full of coincidences," she replies, not looking at him as she says it. She's gone through this before, seen others at the fork in the road between unhappy knowledge and content ignorance. Knowledge has a way of rarely, if ever, granting peace. 

She looks over at him, the opportunity to accept or denounce it in her waiting expression. If you don't want to see the threads of fate in your own life, if you ask if it _is_ a coincidence, I'll say what you need me to say.

He turns towards her, eyes searching and heavy. "Right," he agrees, nodding slowly, making his choice. "Why not suspend my disbelief? Believe that comets are harbingers of doom. Werewolves are real, and -" he flicks his hand, gesturing to all the rest.

She smiles, peeking down at her bare feet to hide it. "Yes, well... I'm sorry your 160-year life has been so un-magical you didn't know werewolves were real."

He frowns deliberately, both of them grasping for something lighter. "I prefer to believe in things people have seen. Like Ninja Turtles. Or dragons."

She peeks up at him, tilting her head to keep hair out of her face. "You know one of those is real, right?"

He squints, waiting for her to break. "I don't believe you."

Her grin turns impish. Oh, if only there was a chance of convincing him Ninja Turtles were real, he'd keep him on that hook, mime zipping her lips. "It simply isn't an adventure worth telling if there aren't any dragons."

He tries not to smile, ducking his chin when he's unsuccessful. "Oh?" he asks with all exasperation, "here be dragons meant here, actually, be dragons?"

"That depends on the map," she answers, _obviously._

He shakes his head, stretching away from the car. "Perhaps you can point out these dragons on the way," he offers.

Her humor drops, taken back by the suggestion. "Are you...offering to drive me to Richmond?"

He matches her uncertainty, realizes there's a disconnect between where they each thought they were going. "Not if that isn't what you want..." he answers slowly. 

"I just didn't expect you to...I mean, this is one thing," she means Sheila's house, helping her this far. She grips the fabric of her dress in her uninjured hand, her other still stationary across her waist, as if in a sling to keep it immobile. "But Richmond isn't a few blocks away. I wasn't going to ask you to disrupt your life more than I have already." 

She doesn't see the impact of her words, unable to meet his eyes while she tries to cool her embarrassment, looking instead at Sheila's porch. _Does she know we're still here?_

She hears Stefan's stance change, facing her more directly. "I'm still offering," and leaves it there, kind and understanding, and waiting for her choice. 

She pulls in a deep breath. "Thank you," she says quietly.

She swallows hard when they both turn to the car, realizing that's not just a wet dress she has to contend with, but one splattered with the blood that dripped from her hands. She doesn't want to force him to endure it for two hours. 

"Do you think we could stop by the Boarding House first? Maybe change clothes?" she bites her lip as she asks, worried of overstepping, or of him knowing why she made the appeal.

"Sure," he agrees. 

She feels like she should say something, because jokes about suspending his disbelief aside, there's a lot of turmoil in that brooding forehead of his. What _to_ say though? 

"Stefan?" She calls over the roof, still at a lost when he looks over at her. "The thing about comets being harbingers of doom? They're not really. They're just snow and ice," she echoes something he hasn't had the chance to say yet. He had said more too, that they're just following their destined path, trying to return home every 145 years, that they're alone. That she leaves behind. "You can subscribe all sorts of meaning to it...make of it what you want."

It doesn't have to be any one thing, or any one way. It doesn't have to be tragic. She doesn't want to leave him with that impression, especially when he once looked at it with something like promise, hope, the start of something epic. 

Something inexpressible relaxes on his brow. His eyes drop, and when he looks at her again, there's a thank you there that warms her through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Next: ii. Ne'er cast a clout til May is out ___  
> or to put it another way, don't let your guard down just yet.


	2. ne'er cast a clout ‘til may is out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously: A witch-minion kidnaps Casey the night the Gilberts go over Wickery Bridge and so Casey decides to intervene with the status quo.

**chapter two: ne'er cast a clout 'til may is out**

"When you mentioned Sheila Bennett, I thought you knew–" he pauses to rethink his word choice, Sheila's house disappearing in the rear-view "were acquainted with her."

She gives a Gallic shrug. Being circumventive hadn't been her highest priority, as evidenced by not saying sayonara once she climbed up the slats of Wickery Bridge. She called her Sheila Bennett, not Sheila, and hadn't meant to imply any relationship with her beyond reputation. But, there's always something to give it away, isn't there? She can't help sounding familiar. 

"But you do know her," he puzzles out, hand sliding down the steering wheel for a looser grip, his ring tapping silently. "And you know me."

Ah, _how well do you know me?_

"It's a bit strange," she empathizes. His eyebrows briefly lift in agreement.

"It's more than just seeing someone's future," he guesses, thinking over what's she's admitted so far. "You know part of their past."

"Yes..." she agrees, keeping her hands still and cupped in her lap, wondering what he wants her to share about his past.

His eyes run over her face for a moment, eyes light with curiosity, the strangeness and the newness of it. "How can you have visions about people without meeting them first?"

"You mean without reading their palm or staring into their eyes first?" She laughs as his lips quirk, acknowledging that his schema for seers is psychics and fortune tellers. She affects a serious, searching look as if performing a reading before shrugging easily. "Six degrees of separation and all that."

"It's associative?" He tilts his head back to the windshield as he mulls it over. 

"The supernatural world gets pretty tangled," she says it like it's a joke, like knowing him, or Sheila, or this town holds no more significance than anything else. 

"It sounds overwhelming," he says after a moment, pensively. He hesitates on his next question, voicing it carefully to give none of his personal feelings away. "What did you see?" 

"About you?" How to condense that? She knows she's seen more than he'd feel comfortable with. The metaphorical skeletons in the closet, the actual names grooved into the walls.

He frowns. "About anyone. Their life story? Their fate?" A line forms between his brows, reflecting the somber mood that took hold when she talked about 1864 and the comet.

"Their decisions," she decides, with emphasis, realizing his questions are alluding to a crisis of philosophy, of fate vs. self-determination. 

He licks his bottom lip. "So, our choices do matter?"

She waits before answering, thinking about the importance of this question. He believes his actions and his values are what defines him, and it's been a guiding principle and, when he can't reconcile his violent actions against that philosophy, it's been a heavy source of pain. If I do monstrous things, I'm a monster. If I try to be better, maybe I can be better.

But it's not as simple as saying fate, whatever construct of it exists, isn't real. That everything truly comes down to personal choice. 

There's a thread of destiny to Mystic Falls, to the doppelgänger. Stefan's thread is linked to it, and his actions decide how tangled he becomes.

"Sometimes," she blows out a breath, digging her shoulders back against the seat "Most of the time, actually. But...sometimes the cards are already dealt, and you choose how you want to play your hand."

He works with the metaphor. "And if you want to leave the table?"

"You could...” she squints ambivalently, wondering if he’d really be willing to leave Mystic Falls. No. He might stay to persuade Damon to leave, to figure out Damon’s game, to try to convince Damon to give up on Katherine – fat chance without the tomb opening – but he wouldn’t leave before that, she doesn’t think. Unless he looks at it as leaving Damon to his own mess... But, even then, knowing he'd be better for it, she's not sure he could stay removed, aloof to Damon's actions or needs. 

“Do you feel what they feel, or just watch it happen?" his question pierces through her thoughts.

It’s not accusing. It’s not criticizing. He sounds genuinely interested in knowing how it works, but she can’t help from bristling. It mirrors too close to past accusations. 

"I didn't just watch it happen. I wasn’t a... a spectator. I didn’t _choose_ \- ” she swallows it back, digs her fingers into her closed eyes, feels moisture clinging to her eyelashes. Oh God, get it _together._ Don’t cry. Don’t alienate the only person willing to help you right now by being defensive. 

“Casey,” he gets her attention, hand reaching out before he changes his mind and deliberately places it slowly on the steering wheel. "I'm sorry. I worded that poorly. I didn’t mean to imply it was...easy for you."

She holds her breath until it hurts, keeps her eyes closed. _Easy for you._ “No, it’s, it’s fine,” she exhales shakily, dropping her hands into her lap, lips pressed tight. “I’m just...exhausted.”

That only covers about half of it, if that, but it’s true too.

She’s never going to get away from the visions, is she? 

It's quiet the rest of the drive.

* * *

The Boarding House reminds her of that clearing, though it takes a moment to work out why. She was too busy at Wickery Bridge, too focused on making the right decision, and wondering at the fallout, and wondering at the _blood poisoning_ , to think I'm at Wickery Bridge, standing on the largest cache pile of white oak.

She's less overwhelmed now. The Boarding House feels like...more sacred ground to trample over.

Stefan bends a knee to untie his boots, and she tentatively steps down from the foyer into the living room. There's not much to see, as it's dark. The outer curves of the unlit fireplace, the heavy curtains closed over the large windows. The Tudor batten design rising all the way up to the timbered framed ceiling shadowed high above.

Stefan flips a light switch to illuminate the foyer in soft yellow light. "Are you sure you only want a towel?" His hand lifts to rub the back of his neck. "Or...I can offer you a change of clothes?"

She glances down at herself, at her wrinkled, dirty, waterlogged dress. "If you don't mind..." She would like to change into something warm, and dry, and something big she can hide in, after feeling indecent.

"I don't," he reassures, tilting his head towards the hallway in a signal to follow.

He turns on another light switch, and scones light up the hallway. She walks slowly, head swiveling to each picture, and painting, and tapestry they pass, spaced out to give each their own prominence. There are impressions of little things she's seen. Rose standing there. Damon making out with Kelly Donovan. Small confrontations spoken in hushed undertones. She ignores the déjà vu, reaching out to touch the etched detail on the wooden banister, to trail her hand feather-light on the glossy handrail as they walk up, her toes sinking into the plush red rug laid on the steps.

She knows he's watching her take it in, her steps slow intermediately. There's so much history here, things collected with care. She moves closer to the old photographs, absently searching for Stefan or Damon to see if they're in any of them. They're not, not even up here.

There's a smaller staircase down the hall. Hidden away, she thinks, wondering if it's intentional. It leads up to an open, familiar, loft with dark green walls and timber cross beams.

"Do you want to change first?" he asks her.

"No, I'll wait," she shakes her head as he digs through his drawers. In her peripheral, she can see they're organized with almost military efficiency, as she takes in the rest of the room.

There are stacked boxes, as yet unpacked, in the corner where he keeps a brown leather couch, his desk, and where the French doors look down at the separate garage. His desk is clean, no personal affects, no computer. No gaming devices, no tv, no stereo. Because he gets rid of them when they're outdated? Because he hasn't unpacked them yet? There's at least a record player, closed in its glass case, above a shelf of tightly packed records, some of the edges frayed, others pristine. 

Stefan hands her a towel before he heads to the bathroom, and she takes it with a polite, mostly automatic, thank you. She pulls it around her shoulders, creating a barrier between her skin and wet hair as she circles the room without touching anything. No personal pictures. Mostly abstract artwork, which is funny because didn’t he pick fun of Klaus’s abstract paintings? Hmm.

The journals are there, their shelf low to the ground. 

Something of his identity is in plain sight.

Stefan comes out with drier, spikier hair, a white undershirt, sweatpants, and bare feet.

"I left some clothes on the counter," he tilts his chin. "You seemed lost in thought when I pulled them out," he shrugs one shoulder, a light, closed smile gracing his face.

"Sorry," her fingers tighten on the towel to keep it closed in front of her. "Just...weird," she explains.

"Right," he agrees, looking like he agrees as he fiddles with a pair of rolled socks in hand.

"What happened to your shoes?" he gestures to her bare feet, moving to sit on the edge of his bed.

She curls her toes reflexively. "Kicked them off."

"Do you want me to find you a pair?"

She looks down at her toes in contemplation. "I don't know, what size –"

His attention catches behind her, a changed focus coming over him and making her instinctively follow his gaze.

Zach climbs up the last few steps, in a white undershirt and flannel sleep pants. He scratches at his curly, sleep ruffled hair. "Can we talk?" He asks Stefan, sparing her a short, discomforted glance.

Stefan looks at her, and she curls the towel around her shoulders as she signals she'll be in the bathroom getting changed.

Right before she shuts the door, she hears Zach ask, "who is she?" with something uncomfortable in his voice.

She closes the door before she can hear Stefan's response.

* * *

The summer sun has leaked out of her face. She pinches her cheek, the skin staying frightfully pale. Her lips are nearly purple, her eyes blood shot and outlined in pink.

After a short, critical inspection: not dead, not good, she keeps her eyes averted.

There's a comb on the counter, but she doesn't have the dexterity or patience to use it. Instead, she squeezes some of the water out of her tangled hair, one handed. Without anything to use as a hair tie, she doesn't bother trying to make it presentable.

She pats her bra with the towel, wipes down the rest of her body before pulling the drawstrings tight on the sweatpants, rolls the extra fabric at the ankles. She sits on the toilet and very sedately rolls the socks on, wondering if she's given Zach enough time to talk to Stefan privately.

She blows out a breath, decides it isn't rude to remind Stefan of her presence, given her circumstances. 

Only, when she steps out of the bathroom, the bedroom is empty.

She stands there awkwardly, straining her ears to catch a hint of where they are. Maybe the bottom of the stairs, away from the bathroom door, in case she interrupted coming out?

Again, nothing. 

The second-floor hallway is also a balcony to the library and the living room. She hears soft, indistinguishable voices, and peaks over the rail.

Grayson Gilbert, blue button-down damp and slick to his shoulders, and Zach Salvatore, still in his sleep-rumbled pajamas, are standing over Stefan's body.

Shit. _Shit_.

She peeks again, makes out grey socked feet, the back of his jeans. She can't see his face. Can't see his skin. She doesn't know if the rest of his body has turned grey to match those socks, to match the sweatpants he let her borrow.

She can't see from here.

_Fuck._

The word loops in her head as she puts one foot in front of the other, finds herself edging down the staircase with a pounding heart.

Zach looks up at her first. His shoulders are bunched, hands fisted at his sides. Grayson looks guarded, dark narrowed eyes watching her approach as if he's expecting a fight.

"It would be pretty bad karma to kill the man who saved your life," her voice sounds thready.

"Did he?" Grayson asks, looking down to contemplate the body at his feet.

She forces herself closer, micro steps, just until she can make out Stefan's pale skin.

"Yes he did," she breathes, dizzy, her spine straightening as she looks at him head-on. "And your daughter's. More than I could have done, had he not been there."

She _doesn’t say_ ‘more than you could do’. If she had jumped off Wickery Bridge _without_ Stefan to rely on, she doubts she could have helped at all.

"Stefan saved you? And Elena?" Zach interrupts, eyes darting between her and Grayson's stand-off. He takes a halting step forward, knees slightly bent, like he might drop to Stefan's side, but he checks himself, and ultimately, stays rooted in place.

"He did," Grayson admits, clipped, reluctant. He looks to Casey. "I want to know why he was there in the first place and why you were there with him."

"You didn't ask him before you vervained him?" She _tries_ not to sound sarcastic. 

Grayson continues to stare her down, dead-eyed. 

Her jaw tightens. "Because he heard the crash and realized someone needed help. I took Elena from him so he could go back for any other survivors.”

"And he just happened to be there? When my daughter’s life was in danger?" 

" _Yes._ And he helped a man who _just happened_ to know he was a vampire and would be willing to use that information against him."

His jaw clenches, but he turns his eyes down before she can read them. 

"Should I make an exception for him?" he asks almost absently "hope he doesn't threaten my children, my town if he can no longer control his bloodlust? Or, look away if a hiker goes missing while he's hunting in our woods?"

She runs her tongue along the back of her teeth, briefly looking to Zach to see his take on this. He doesn't offer a defense for Stefan, but there's something in his expression, like he’s hoping she can make an argument he can't.

This isn’t what this is about, but Zach doesn’t know that. Grayson, likely, preyed on Zach’s guilt on the Salvatore family secret. She doesn't know if he's generalizing or if he know something about Stefan’s bloodlust specifically.

She can’t make Grayson own up to his real worry – about Elena, about rumors of the doppelgänger getting out of Mystic Falls. Unless she’s willing to broach that minefield, she’s limited to this argument.

"The problem with shooting first is you never get your questions answered. Not by the person you want them from." Unless of course, immediate answers aren’t his worry, and he plans to take Stefan to an Augustine basement. "And had you met him earlier, preemptively took him out...you wouldn't have survived tonight, and neither would your daughter."

Honestly, she's not sure how strong the protection is on the doppelgänger; how strong the call is for aid. Elena _could_ have died... (but would she have stayed dead?)

From his perspective she gets being leery, but when Stefan knocked on his glass, had he not been grateful? 

“And the reason you caught him out wasn’t because anyone in your town had been hurt, but because he did something _kind.”_

Grayson bows his head, staring down at his cradled hands, his right clenched around his left. She can't tell if he's compulsively touching his wedding ring or the Gilbert ring. Which one is stronger on his mind?

"I meant to weaken him, leave him conscious," he confesses, and she dares to hope he’s conceding. "I didn't believe he truly abstained from human blood."

She shakes out her right hand at her side, the ache spreading. "How long will he be out?"

He looks at her considering as she lifts her chin. _Will you let him go?_

"It depends on his vervain tolerance, how much blood he's taken in, how much weaker animal blood makes him."

"Approximate," she asks. She's not even sure what variables are most relevant. Does age matter? Linage? Diet? Weight even? Is it all about the vervain, how it's cultivated? How it's processed? How it's injected? The volume?

He rubs between his eyes a moment, frowning deeply. "Too long for me to stay. I don't want to be away from Elena too long."

"And you shouldn't," Zach agrees, breathing slowly. "Grayson," he choreographs his movement before placing his hand on Grayson's shoulder. "You're grieving. Your family is grieving. They need you." He doesn't direct Grayson, but leaves the appeal open. 

Grayson looks down at Stefan's body. She bites her tongue.

"I want him to stay away from my daughter," Grayson decides, something dark underlining his voice, of consequences from disobeying this stipulation.

Zach nods, willing to pass on the message.

She doesn’t think declaring it forbidden is going to stop interest from either party.

"You have an open invitation," she declares, with intentional irony. _"Apparently."_

"I'll drive you back to the hospital," Zach pulls his hand off his shoulder, eyes skating away from the body on the floor.

"Wait," she blurts out, realizing they really are leaving. She speaks to Zach for the first time, hurriedly while he hasn't turned away from Stefan yet. "Can you carry him to the – to my car?"

He frowns at her, light green eyes surprised.

She moves closer, before he can get his bearings "look, I know you don't know me," she murmurs, even knowing Grayson can still hear her "but I think when he wakes up, he'll want to stay somewhere else for tonight, to recuperate."

Who knows if that's true, but Zach nods tightly.

"And do you have a directory specific to Mystic Falls? A yellow pages? I'd like to call the hotels in the area," she holds her breath.

"Right," he agrees, with guilty understanding.

* * *

She keeps her hands on the steering wheel, the doors locked as Zach drives off with Grayson. Grayson’s car – what he had borrowed – was parked behind hers (behind Marie's). Did Zach keep an eye out and notify him? Did Grayson lie in wait somewhere where neither Stefan nor she saw him? Was it coordinated between them?

She flips through the B's in the yellow pages, places her finger on the right number.

It rings and rings and rings –

"Hi," she cringes when Sheila picks up with an annoyed sigh.

"Does this seem like a more reasonable time to you?" She sounds both drowsy and affected.

_Well, you did tell foretell her death. Drinking is the usual reaction._

"Any chance you have mugwort or hibiscus?"

Sheila is quiet on the other line.

"I can't see how those ingredients have anything to do with your predicament," she finally drawls.

"Uh, new predicament actually," she looks over at Stefan collapsed in the passenger seat.

Sheila exhales over the line. "Hibiscus isn't in bloom yet; I don't know where you'll find it. I do have some mugwort," she admits reluctantly.

She hoped that wouldn't be the case. By her own confession Sheila didn’t keep much of a garden or pantry. 

She's starting to think Sheila either keeps her magic to teaching occult history at Whitmore, or doesn't practice much at all. 

No coven. No Abby. And with Bonnie, not teaching her, nor sharing any of their history unless she's three sheets to the wind. 

Casey rubs her eyes. "No, I need them both. Thank you anyway."

Sheila sounds reluctant, but she asks anyway. "Why do you need them?"

"They counteract vervain," she answers blasé, closing the yellow pages and moving them to the backseat.

Drunk she may be, but she’s quick to understand the implication.

" _Not even a full hour,_ " she hears Sheila grumble before she hangs up on her.

That's...fair.

* * *

Stefan twitches, blearily opening his eyes as she reaches to turn the quiet music down further, to a whisper she can barely hear.

"You know, in the time of our acquaintance, we've both been poisoned, and both fallen unconscious," she greets him.

He lifts up on his elbows slowly, looks out at the highway passing through the windshield to orient where they are, before laying back down with a slight groan. She laid the seat as far as it would go when Zach and she carried him to the car. "I didn't know he had vervain," he chokes out.

She keeps her eyes on the road. "Pretty sure I told you to be on your guard around him."

"I was," he declares wryly, hunching forward as he reaches down to pull the seat up. "I didn't think Zach..."

He doesn't finish, his jaw tight as he rubs his hands against his thighs.

She blows out a breath. "I think he was put in an uncomfortable position." He feared vampires, she knew. He supplied the council with vervain. Did he know what Grayson would do – what he does in the Augustine? She doesn't know what led to Zach letting Grayson in, to standing over his body, but he didn't look at ease with it, and he looked...tentatively, relieved when Grayson backed off? It could be fear in Damon's retaliation or out of some existing loyalty to Stefan. "I don't know if he knew what Grayson would do."

"Did Zach tell him?" She can tell it hurts him to ask.

About him being a vampire. 

"No. I don't know," she admits, as he looks at her pained and searchingly. "But I don't think so. I think Grayson found out because of Johnathan Gilbert's journals. 'I recognized the vampire that killed me,'" she loosely quotes.

She _thinks_ that’s how Grayson knew.

"So, every time I came home to Mystic Falls..." he murmurs.

He had been at risk.

She considers if that was true. Jeremy wouldn't believe the journals until he met Anna. Most of the founding families didn't believe the stories until a suspicious animal attack made them reconsider, and this generation of the council hadn't even shared the spooky family stories with their children. She's not sure why that is.

"I don't think they were willing to risk letting the founding families know about their magical rings." It's true that the Gilberts had kept his secret, knowingly or unknowingly.

He nods, but it's distracted, his brows furrowed. "What did you tell him?"

"Grayson?" She wonders. "Basically, I said he was an asshole to attack the person who saved his life."

He raises his brows at her. She smiles briefly, closed mouth. "He wants you to stay away from Elena. And when the first person dies mysteriously in Mystic Falls, I'm pretty sure he's going to try to pull a round up the usual suspects."

He frowns. "You didn't mention anything suspicious about the accident?" He wonders curiously.

She makes a face. "It might be hard to believe, but I don't usually tell people about the vision thing. And the accident wasn’t suspicious, it actually was an accident."

"Really?" And the tone of disbelief is more blatant than it’s ever been.

"Bad timing. Road was slick. Old bridge. No visibility. Usual route closed because of a downed powerline from the storm. Driving too fast and not entirely sober after partaking in a few glasses at wine at family game night, meaning slower reaction time," she lists.

He shakes his head, like he's not sure what to think. "How did you get me in the car?" he asks, starting to sit up more.

"Oh, Zach. I implied you might want to be somewhere else tonight after...that." Because she didn’t trust Grayson. Because it felt wrong to leave him alone and vervained. Because he'd wake eventually, and worse case scenario she'd be unconscious next to him. Her eyes dart to the note on the console with Stefan's name on it. She wrote it before driving, and it lists the directions to the apothecary and what to ask for, just in case. 

"How's your hand?"

Her shoulders tighten. She's been biting the inside of her cheek so long it hurts when she lets it go. Her right hand is immobile in her lap, a burn crawling under her skin. "I think Sheila was optimistic," she admits, trying to sound even. "It hurts worse than before."

"Pull over," he directs, as if he hasn’t just regained consciousness from the caustic burn of vervain.

"Are you sure you're alright to...?" Because if she lets go of the only task available to her, she won't have the energy to start driving again.

"Casey," he sighs, quirking his lips reassuringly when she peeks over at him. "I'm sure."

* * *

The kid is her age, probably, and yet her first impression is _great, a kid_ when they walk into the apothecary. Stefan looks better, or at least, is trying to look better, pinched and shoulders curved, but he's conscious and no longer sweating, so doing better than her anyway.

He was skeptical when they pulled up. The sidewalk is a tripping hazard, cracked like an earthquake rolled beneath it. The building are a relic, before superstores and malls drove business off the street thirty-forty years ago.

The sign 'Exotic Teas' is old and peeling, the window-front taped up with cardboard and butcher paper making it impossible to see inside.

The little bell above the door chimes with their entrance, the store bursting with floor to ceiling drawers, and glass jars stuffed with scores of plants and ingredients. The outside looks like a squatter’s paradise, but the inside is vibrant and warm.

The kid behind the counter looks up from his book and greets them with "neither of you are wearing shoes."

She had forgotten to grab Stefan's boots. At least they're wearing socks, and the bottom of their feet aren't tracking anything in.

"Is Charlotte here?"

He rolls his eyes. "You know it's like 3 a.m. right?"

"Yeah? And how are you with breaking a blood poisoning curse?"

His eyes light up, cataloguing the stressors on her appearance with interest. "I can do it," he pushes the book away, clearing the space in front of him and looking up at her with wide, light brown eyes.

She approaches carefully, hoping he’s not overestimating himself.

"I need a flushing solution. For you to break the curse on this dagger," she drops it onto the counter "and the use of one of your hotboxes."

"Hotbox?" He asks, tearing his eyes away from the dagger. "Isn't that for the detoxers?"

She smiles achingly. "You sure you can't get Charlotte?"

He unsheathes the dagger with another eyeroll as he pulls out a sliver of witch-glass to study the curse on the blade.

"Not that complicated," the guy nods, setting the glass down. "So, where'd they stab you?"

She glances down at her hand but doesn't try to lift it. He leans over the counter to peek at the veins crawling up her arm, thick and bulging, and he grimaces. "Gross."

"And painful," Stefan raises his brows at the guy.

"Right, well, you sure you want a flushing solution and the hotbox? You could always go for Epanfero pearls or Theriac. Be easier."

"Keep the dagger and you can study it," she offers, drooping a little as she shrugs. "The curse has to be completely flushed out or it will recuperate. This way is faster." And cheaper.

He looks at the dagger again, but without the witch-glass. "Sounds pretty insidious," he replies with a bit of disquiet.

She smiles weakly.

"Alright," he plucks up the dagger, and leads them through the backroom. She looks back at Stefan, nonverbally asking if he's going with her or going to stay upstairs, and he stuffs his hands into his pockets and nods, eyebrows briefly raising as if to say, 'why not?'

"You know you'll have to remove your rings to avoid interference, right?" The clerk comments as he nimbly takes the stairs to the basement.

"Got it," she breathes shakily, carefully following with Stefan at her back. She thought she caught a brief look at her through the witchglass, and she's glad he's proven to be crafter than first appearance.

There are four hotboxes lined up in the room, each with their own little window. 

"Ever used one before?" The clerk asks.

She hums an affirmative. 

There's a stretcher laid out near the door, balanced on crates of electrolyte powder, water bottles, snack packs, and mismatched towels.

She drops onto it with weak knees, figuring any horizontal surface that isn't the floor is perfect.

The clerk places the dagger down on one of the crates and turns to Stefan. "I'm going to get the flushing solution. Her bandage and rings need to come off. And uh, some people strip down, so..." he flails his arm slightly, a very, do what you will before pivoting towards the door.

"I'm going to leave the clothes on," she tells Stefan, her eyes closed.

He makes a noise of understanding. "I'll help with the bandage, if that's okay."

"If it doesn't bother you," she agrees, not wanting to look at it, to pretend it isn’t throbbing with fever. The bandage is already stained with black blood.

She feels his hand touch hers, first to lightly squeeze her wrist before peeling the medical tape away and lifting the bandage off her skin. It sticks slightly, but she doesn't feel it.

She starts to open her eyes, her neck still stretched back when he advises her not to.

"That bad?" She laughs unconvincingly.

"It's not great," he declares, reaching for her other hand. She holds her breath when he slides the opal down her pointer finger, and then the silver Celtic knot down her ring finger.

The glamour drops. The still healing discoloration, lightening webbed with scars at her wrists. The long puckered white line at the crook of her elbow to the middle of her arm. The brand of an eye burned into her forearm near the top of her right hand. She keeps her chin high, her breathing forcibly even as she peeks at his reaction. There are three slashes, waxy with new skin, from her left eyebrow to her cheek.

The shop clerk comes back. Where Stefan observed solemnly, he hisses through his teeth. "Holy shit –” he goggles at Stefan, as if searching for mutual horror, but when Stefan gives him a look, it seems to snap him out of it.

"Right, this for later," he hands the vial to Stefan, and flutters his hands to tell her to lay down.

“Can you also make a tonic of hibiscus and mugwort?" she asks politely, causing his eyes to dart away from her scars.

He squints at her. "Why?"

"For him," she inclines her chin towards Stefan at his shoulder. Both of their expressions are puzzled. "To counteract vervain."

"I didn't know anything could counteract vervain," the clerk murmurs, sounding intrigued, and taking in Stefan's vampire status without batting an eye. 

Stefan's eyebrows are up as their eyes catch, just as surprised that something can counter vervain, before he shakes his head ruefully.

"You know this is going to suck, right?" the shopkeeper advises her.

"It started sucking about six hours ago."

He shrugs, and starts in on her cursed wound.

* * *

By the time she stumbles out of the hotbox, her brain feels like it's melted out of her ears, and her entire body is covered in sweat and flushed red.

She discarded Stefan's clothes in a delirium, and at least has the presence of mind to wrap herself in a towel Gene – the clerk – left in the box with her. It’s steam damp, but she isn’t bothered.

Stefan is sitting against the wall across from the box, forearms rested on his bent, spread knees.

She's not sure where to go for a moment, only wants to desperately cool down before deciding to join him, plopping down at his shoulder against the wall, still panting.

She's latently aware that her tattoo at her clavicle is exposed, but discards it.

"How was it?" he asks, handing over a water bottle with an electrolyte pouch. She tears the package with her teeth.

"I know you've detoxed before. So that, but blistering," she chugs the water until it's half full before dropping the powder into it. "Sorry I smell," she apologizes, breathlessly. The towel is large enough to nearly touch her knees, and she's so thankful she can stretch her bare legs with only a moderate, absent embarrassment. She's more bothered by the visible scars, but it's distant as her brain unfogs. 

He shakes his head, ducking his chin to his chest. "You smell like heat."

She bets he's being kind, but she's happy to not smell of rot or blood.

She turns her hand over, sees the wound is pink and not too deep. She marvels at the healthy skin, and the ability to flex her fingers one by one. Her mood drops slightly, as the brand, waxy and cutting on her arm.

"How long was I in there?" She asks for distraction, tucking her arm behind her.

"About two hours," he digs through his pockets and hands over her two rings. She takes them delicately.

Stefan looks up from her clavicle as the tattoo disappears behind the glamour.

"How'd the tea work for you?" She asks, fixated on the twinkling opal for a moment.

"Good," he answers with some surprise. "Gene recorded it in his journal."

She finishes her water bottle with a listening nod. Most witches, and warlocks, are very not okay with spells and recipes leaving their person, leaving their family, or their coven. She had an outsider's perspective, and more of an academic view on magic.

More shared more gained and all that.

Stefan obviously has some experience with covetous witches because he watches her expression to see how she feels about it. He doesn't seem surprised when she shrugs, unbothered.

"Thank you for sharing it," he looks down at his hands, loose between his knees.

"Of course." And she breaks the moment by yawning. "Do you mind if I drive you home later? I just need a few hours to sleep."

"Here?" He gives the barren room a sarcastic look.

She laughs. "No. Someplace else." She looks back to the hotbox, the sweat cooling on her skin and making her rally herself to put the shirt and sweatpants back on. She'll need to settle her bill too. "I could show you?" She offers.

* * *

They drop down the short ladder, the walls glowing with swirling murals in bio-luminescent paint. Epoxy has preserved the cobblestone, giving the illusion you’re floating above them. It's the physical embodiment of an acid trip, and kind of hilarious when you realize the passageway leads to a way for people to get clean.

"There’s a hostel on the other side, or you could call it the Brookland Boarding House," she presents, smiling over her shoulder.

"A boarding house for the supernatural?" He asks, bemused.

Ah, wait and see.

She stops at the other ladder at the end of the tunnel and points to the underside of the trapdoor, to the large symbol and Latin script.

"Have you seen that symbol before?"

He shakes his head slowly. "I'm not sure...” he considers it for a moment before moving on to the script. “A warning against breaking sanctuary?"

She's briefly surprised he can read Latin. But then, she's not sure what all he's studied in 160 years, nor the type of education he received in the 1850-1860's.

"The wards will feel unwelcoming at first, but when you sign the registry, you’ll create a contract, vowing on your name and blood that you'll uphold the sanctuary."

His brow lifts in the low, glowing light. "So, you can't attack anyone who signs the registry, and they can't attack you?"

She waves her hand in a see-saw gesture. "You can't attack on the sanctuary grounds or else you'll be punished by blood. If you follow another patron off grounds while you're both signed into the book, and you're found out, your _name_ is mud. You'll be denied sanctuary anywhere."

He considers that. He catches the implication that once both patrons sign out of the book, they're free to do what they like against each other.

"You want to go up?" She asks, just to be sure.

He tilts his head back to the seal, jaw cutting. "Why not," he muses.

The trapdoor opens at the front desk, with Sofia, the proprietor knitting at the counter with sharp, pointed needles. She gives the illusion of not paying attention, though she's only at the counter because she felt the wards alert her to the trapdoor opening at the apothecary. Stefan climbs up, his shoulders bunched as the wards wash over him.

"You look a mess," Sofia greets her, her stare unwavering from Stefan, her needles still active.

"Late night."

"Early morning," Sofia counters, pointing one of her needles at a stream of morning light highlighting the floor.

Casey beckons Stefan to the registry, laid open under Sofia's nose.

"He's my guest," she explains.

Sofia hands over a fountain pen like one handling scissors, her needles loose and no less threatening in her other hand. Stefan Salvatore is written on the pointed line, and a deep tie forms between his signature and her own, declaring her responsible. His shoulders drop as the pressing weight of the wards turn languid.

"Will you be wanting blood sent up?" Sofia asks him, drifting back to her knitting.

"That's not necessary," Stefan casts Casey a look, full of questions, probably wondering how Sofia could tell he was a vampire. 

She makes a face at him. Did he have to look at her while turning down blood? "Can you hand me the keys?" She asks him.

His digs into his front pocket, the denim lowering on his trim hips.

Once she has them in hand, she places them on the counter. "Silver Mercedes parked in front of the apothecary. Don't care what happens to it, but I'd like the contents."

"And the owner?" Sofia asks, still knitting.

"Not a patron."

Sofia looks back at the registry, seems to take measure of her guests before shrugging.

That cleared, Casey leads Stefan up the corner stairs.

"What was that look?" He asks in an undertone.

She laughs softly. "Forget it," she isn't going to tell him that Sofia thinks he's going to be drinking from her.

"There's a couch in my room, if you want to sleep, or you can explore, look in the library for any books on dragon species," she smiles tiredly.

She almost falls into her room once the knob clicks as she lays her hand over it.

"Mi sala su sala," she gestures "the, uh, knob will work for you too if you want to leave and/or come back. Bathroom that way."

And then, without washing the sweat off, changing, pulling down the sheets, or even removing her two solitary duffel bags off the end of the bed, she faceplants against the mattress and passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hibiscus and mugwort is from The Originals.
> 
> Mystic Falls, according to the episode Rose, is located on the James River, 'basically' between Lynchburg and Charlottesville, and not far from Richmond. I'm going to clock it at 1 hour and 30 minutes.
> 
> Next: iii. as the case may be.


	3. as the case may be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Previously: Stefan is vervained by Grayson Gilbert. Casey de-escalates the situation, heads to Richmond, and is then de-poisoned.

**Chapter three: as the case may be**

Gene balances his journal high on his bent knees as he records Stefan’s impressions of the tea, his interest only put off by shifting uncomfortably on the hard cement. Stefan feels an itch to apologize for staying down here, but waiting through a detox, in a basement, is more familiar to him than entering the apothecary upstairs, the domain of witches who in his experience are distrustful if not outright disgusted by vampires.

The effects of the tea are subtle, as he’s already burnt through what’s in his system, but he feels less drained. As a consequence of his diet, he’s always aware of his ebbing energy, how to conserve, how long he can stretch out his need before the thirst threatens his resolve. He doesn’t think it’s a placebo. He’s never heard of, nor believed it was possible to neutralize vervain, to have any faith in it. 

“I’m guessing this isn’t the usual way to go about this?”

Gene’s pen stops as his pulls down the journal. “This?” He gestures, spinning his pen to encircle the hotboxes and pointing at the cot where Casey was laid upon. “Uh, no. Hotboxes are usually for people who, you know, poison themselves. Want to get clean. Sometimes purify themselves before a ritual.”

Poison themselves, that’s one way to classify addiction.

“How does it work?” Some of it is similar to his own detoxes. Locking yourself away in an enclosed space, locks for a basement, a latch for the box. Until when? The physical dependence is sweated out? Or until the first hurdle of psychological dependence? Until you want to be clean more than you want the drugs? (Want humanity more than the blood.)

“The flushing solution does most of it. This just expedites it. Which I guess it’s the best way if the curse tries to rebound.”

Can it work for a vampire? Can his be expedited, instead of wasting years coming off human blood, rationing animal blood in the meanwhile to avoid desiccation.

Why would a vampire ask? For a vampire, drugs don’t create the same high, or dependence. It burns too quickly. Admitting to an addiction, can only mean one thing, and it doesn’t inspire ease in a human, or a witch.

He looks down at his hands, hanging between his knees. He can’t ask. Nor does he want to think about his own (inevitable) relapses. “Is that unusual, for the curse to rebound?”

Gene pauses, tapping the pen against the edge of the page. “Yeah. I mean... usually when you curse someone it’s one and done. If you’re cursed, or you’re helping someone, you try to unravel it. Poisoned? Find the right antidote.” He shoots Stefan a look. “I guess because you were dosed with vervain she thought the curse had been in her system too long to trust vampire blood...or...maybe it takes longer for your blood to recover it’s healing properties?” He looks down at his journal, pauses to scribble a note. “A curse that looks like poison, acts like poison, and can keep replicating every time you try to fix it? That’s...” he twists his mouth, guilty in admiring it.

Stefan thinks about what Casey told Sheila, that the werewolf venom coating the blade would turn vampire blood into acid.

_Werewolf venom._

He doesn’t share that detail with Gene. 

* * *

Casey is curled around her wounded hand on top of the covers, still flushed with fever. Gene recommended keeping an eye on her, so Stefan declined her offer of getting him his own room before she had even elaborated on where that room happened to be.

In a supernatural boarding house. A dichotomy to the Salvatore Boarding House. And what was the supernatural community beyond witches and vampires? What else is out there?

He’s awake with his thoughts when someone knock on the door hours later. 

The woman on the other side is carrying an old Gladstone bag with both hands, her right shoulder dropped by the weight. She looks him up and down curiously, rolling her shoulder to push back straightened, ice blonde hair out of her face.

“I’m a friend,” she announces, smiling with a tense mouth belaying her impatience. She jostles the bag to one hand, offering the other for a handshake. “Charlotte.”

“Stefan,” he returns, shifting so Casey’s form is visible behind him. She shakes his hand once, perfunctory, and quickly dismissive. Stefan moves out of the way so she can enter.

“She either mentioned me or you’re very trusting,” she drawls as she passes.

He watches her approach the bed, dropping the bag heavily carefully at the end. “I thought this was a magical sanctuary,” he opens with to gauge her reaction.

“Which stops me from doing harm if I value my own life,” she tosses over her head flatly. 

He assumes she’s baiting him to take his measure, see if she can offend him by being patronizing. He trusts that Casey trusts her, as she asked after her in the apothecary, so he only briefly raises his brows, to give her a reaction. 

She narrows her eyes slightly before turning, not quite turning her back to him, but no longer keeping him directly in her sights as she pulls the armchair closer to the bed, sitting elegantly on the very edge as she looks down at Casey. She reaches out to brush a strand of dark red hair aside, to touch her forehead with the back of her fingertips. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“She was slashed with a dagger, to her hand.” He thinks, by the angle, where the cut is deepest, that it's a defensive wound, but Casey didn't elaborate on how it happened. 

She reaches out for hand, gently uncurling the fingers, staying away from the burns at her wrists. 

The whole palm is pink in what looks like a rash. She lifts the other hand to see the same.

“The wound’s healing," she sighs heavily, still pinched. "It’s just inflammation from the hotbox.” 

He shifts his arms against his chest, hands curled around the opposite elbow, thumbs pressing into his skin. “So, you don’t think the curse will rebound?”

She considers the wound seriously. "No. It's run it's course. I'll run a battery to see what all it did," she clenches her hands in her lap. 

"What it did?" he repeats, hearing the implication that the recovery isn't so simple. He stops himself from offering his blood, not sure if it's even safe, with the werewolf venom. 

She smiles, but it holds no amusement. “Don’t let the size of the wound fool you." She doesn't elaborate. "How long was it until she got to the apothecary?”

He shakes his head. He's not sure when the confrontation happened before the bridge. "At least three hours."

He remembers her blue lips, the black tinge on her fingers, the desperate wheeze as she was laid out on Sheila’s couch. Her skin lost all color, except for her veins seeming to swell, the infection strengthening in her hand. He could see the high toil it was taking for her to stay conscious as she starved for oxygen. How she drove so far to Richmond he didn’t know, as he remembered waking up to see her hand pressing against her chest, like she was pushing against the pain, her eyes bloodshot. 

Was breaking the curse and flushing out the poison enough to undo that kind of damage? 

He lowers his chin. “She lost consciousness and needed a witch’s help for a blood clearing spell.”

She frowns deeply. “Why would it take her three hours to get here?"

“We were in Mystic Falls.”

She reels back. " _Mystic Falls_? She told me to never cross the boundary of that place!” She whisper-shouts, turning slightly away from her friend as if to avoid disturbing her.

He was not expecting Mystic Falls to generate that kind of reaction. 

“What did she say about it?” he asks, curious.

She shakes her head, looking between him and Casey with a dozen questions flickering across her face. “To stay away basically. Moths, flames.”

Was that a reference to Katherine's doppelgänger? To the comet? He shakes his head. "Is she always prone to analogies?” 

“Only when she’s absolutely serious.” Her lips purse as she turns back to the bed. “So whomever attacked her has something to do with Mystic Falls.” She muses. “Where do _you_ come in?”

“After. There was a car crash off of a bridge. We met after we both jumped in.” 

She frowns. “Was the attacker there?” 

He shakes his head. “No.”

"No," she repeats, turning to Casey as if she can get the answer as to why, from her. She turns back to Stefan. She holds her hands up. "Okay. Did she _say_ anything about them? About the attack."

He hesitates. By Casey's demeanor she hadn't circumvented much, hadn't avoided anything _directly_.

But, she had also been in pain, and aware that there was a possibility she was going to die. Was she the type to confess more to a stranger, two strangers, than she would her friend? 

Charlotte watches him. "Did it have something to do with wanting... _information_ out of her?" She asks carefully.

He decides, without knowing if it's the right decision, to reply in the same code, to use Casey's own words. "More to prevent her intervening."

She stares blankly. “Intervening in what?” She stops, eyes narrowing. “The car crash?” She asks flatly.

He nods.

She reaches for her necklace, running the pendant back and forth on the chain. “ _Did_ she change anything?”

 _‘Grayson was meant to die_.’ And didn’t. “Yes.”

She breathes deeply. “So, someone kidnapped her, took her to Mystic Falls where this event was supposed to happen, told her it was all to prevent her from intervening, mortally wounded her, and then when Casey escaped, she immediately went to do just that.”

Is that how it happened? “You think they meant for her to intervene?”

She glances up at him, quick and distrustful. “She wouldn’t have allowed you into her room unless she trusted you. Magical sanctuary or not,” her blue, flinty eyes warn him if Casey is wrong. “She wouldn’t have asked for your help.”

“She didn’t ask,” he can’t help but correct, not wanting her under any illusions as to how much Casey trusts him.

"Because you offered first?" she questions. She reads his answer in his face. "Then she allowed you to, which amounts to the same thing.” She returns to the pendant at her neck, sliding back and forth. “You know about her being a former seer?”

He nods.

She narrows her eyes, thoughtfully. “The thing is, she would have had to be very, very careful, in the way she intervened.”

“Why?” he wonders at the cautious, delicate way she words it, the way she lowers her voice. And why, Casey, if she intended to help, did she park out of sight of the bridge, and he suspects, wait for the car to hit it’s point of no return. 

“It’s worse than oath-breaking,” she cautions, deadly serious.

Oath-breaking. Did that mean something different, to witches, to former seers? To him it sounds archaic, something out of the classics. Were there rules here that he was completely ignorant, more than antiqued honor at stake when breaking oaths, or vows?

“Torment," she elaborates "beyond death."

He rubs at his eyes. 

He's confused on what having visions mean. Being a seer. Risking intervening. Fighting fate?

Why tell him those things, about what's going to happen? Why advise Sheila to help her granddaughter be less self-sacrificing? 

Because it wouldn't make a difference?

Cassandra's curse, to never be believed. Oedipus's fate, to fulfill his own monstrous prophecy. 

No. 

No. Someone who carries a mortal wound on their hand, who fights through the poison, did it because she knew there _was_ a chance. 

He doesn't want to live 1864 again. He doesn't want to go through that with Damon. He doesn't want Mystic Falls to experience it again. 

“Did she tell you what changed?” her voice pierces his thoughts, the dread that's hooked into his gut. 

He answers quietly. “She saved someone’s life.”

She observes him for an extended moment, as if waiting for him to add more. Who, possibly. Their importance. 

"So, they knew what was going to happen. They knew that she had a vision about it. They brought her close to where it was going to happen. They tried to kill her, or made it look like they were trying, _or_ were trying to mortally injury her so she did have enough time to intervene." She looks frustrated as she spins through possibilities. 

"You think it was reverse psychology rather than she genuinely escaped?" He guesses. It sounds like a gamble, making sure it happened that way, and that Casey would react how they wanted. "Why didn't they intervene themselves, if that's what they wanted?"

“That’s a good point,” she begrudges, sounding unsure.

He bows his head slightly, wondering if she's actually right to be suspicious, if too much of this is orchestrated. 

“Without being attacked," he wonders "would she have tried to intervene?”

She shakes her head mutely. "I don't think she would have ever stepped foot in Mystic Falls."

He rubs his mouth before asking his next question. “Could it be someone who wanted her suffer torment after death?" 

Her body goes still. He's unconsciously supported her fears. It makes everything else fit. It doesn't matter if they meant for her to fail or succeed to in intervening, if that's what they were after. She fists her hands, to stop from reaching out to Casey and waking her up, making her confirm it. “Did she share anything specifically about the attacker, or attackers?” _Who was it,_ she wants to know. 

He shakes his head. Most of what he knows he’s inferred, her defense wounds, disheveled appearance, the abrasions at her wrists. Her indifference of the car, before she told the woman at the desk to take it. “She had their car, a silver Mercedes C-class, fairly new.”

“Where is it?”

“It was parked at the apothecary, but she handed the keys to the woman at the counter here. Said she only wanted the contents.”

“Hope that hurts, if she left them alive,” she answers blithely.

He glances at Casey’s form, chest rising steady and deep, wonders if she did kill them.

Charlotte snorts. “You seem disappointed,” she observes, reading him and whatever he feels about her friend, with interest.

He looks over at her, steady and without expression.

She files it away. "The witch you went to in Mystic Falls, why couldn't she flush out the poison?"

“She said she didn’t have the ingredients.”

Charlotte raises her brow. “Did you believe her?”

He quirks his brow in return, surmising she’s a woman who trusts very little. “Yes.”

She frowns, dropping her pendant again. “Did she seem at all reluctant about coming to the apothecary?”

“...No.”

He wonders if she suspects someone specifically, someone attached to the apothecary. Someone who at least knows about the visions. And in Casey’s words, _‘i_ _t might be hard to believe, but I don't usually tell people about the vision thing.’_

Putting aside torment after death and however a doppelgänger relates to all this - he wonders if whoever it was intended for her to live, or to die.

* * *

He heads downstairs when Charlotte shakes Casey awake, advises her that they should break the fever, and carry her into the bath to treat the spreading inflammation. He doesn't know what goes into caring for someone who went through what she went through, the poisoning and the treatment, but she's hardly been asleep for a few hours, not nearly enough to recharge, to find reprieve. 

_(Is it because she doesn't want to wait for answers?)_

Casey awakens without moving, without confusion, without grumbling. It tells him how used she is to being disturbed, her adaption. That some part of her stays aware, even when deeply asleep. When she gets up, already resigned, nodding to Charlotte's direction, he decides to leave.

He takes to exploring the strange eclectic house. He assumes it was built in the Queen Anne era; and the wallpaper left from the time it was built. The floors are rickety and could use sanding and new varnish. The artwork is incredibly varied in mediums, styles, size, and taste, and he wonders if Casey was comparing the artwork of the Salvatore Boarding House to this place.

He’s drawn to the only room with the blinds open to natural light.

There’s another occupant tucked into a cushion chair by the window, reading. He trails through the built-in bookcases until he stops in front of the shelves of crammed notebooks and leather-bound journals, running his hand across the leather, some of it cracked, or supple, or hard. He flips through a few, finds handwritten accounts in handwriting he rarely sees anymore. Others hold instructions to ingredient harvesting, crafting, gardening, ritual preparation. He moves towards another shelf, half full of what looks like new additions, most of the covers glossy paperbacks. Some are classics in his own library, none seemingly supernatural.

The mousy brown haired woman who watches him from the corner of her eye speaks up tentatively. “It’s somewhat of a tradition, for lodgers to leave a book behind.”

He scratches at the back of his head, looking over the books. "Is there an organization system?"

She chuckles, burying it in embarrassment as she peeks up through her lashes. “I’m not sure if there ever was one. They all get shuffled out of order.”

Loosely chronological then.

He looks back at the paperbacks.

“I think that’s my favorite section. It tells you about the different beings who’ve been here, what kind of people pass through.”

He thanks her and finds himself drawn to the last book. A short, shiny copy of _‘All’s Well that End’s Well’_. Shakespeare. Not one of the popular plays. There isn’t a foreword, or signature, or note buried between the pages, but he comes across a highlighted passage:

_“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.”_

He thinks he knows who highlighted this passage, who selected this book.

He finds a seat and starts it at the beginning.

* * *

A bell sounds, likely from magic as it vibrates softly through the room, from somewhere farther away.

He doesn’t know what it signifies, and the other occupant in the small library doesn’t look up from her book.

The girl who steps into the library half an hour later looks almost wholly different from the girl he met – who was pained and determined, barefoot and bedraggled in a watertight yellow sundress.

Her hair is untangled and smooth, pulled back into a braid that spirals over her shoulder, the ends curled at the waist. She looks more comfortable, arms swinging slightly at her sides, no longer wrapped around her waist. There’s a healthy flush to her cheeks, brightened from the chalky white, and calmed from breaking her fever. There are patches of drying, pink lotion on her cheeks, the edging of her jaw, and down the sides of her neck. The more he looks for it, he notices it's also smeared liberally on her elbows and up arms. 

She stuffs white gloved hands in her belted khaki shorts, and rocks on her sneakered feet when she reaches him. “Hi,” she smiles, looking only slightly tired. She bites the corner of her lip as her eyes drift to the book in his hands. She aims for dry, but her tone betrays her humor. “You wouldn’t rather read about dragons?”

He softly closes the book, still not sure what he's gleamed from it. “The library’s organized chronologically apparently. I couldn’t decide when’s the most likely time a dragon came to Richmond.”

She laughs softly, plopping into the seat across from him. "Okay...How about an arachnid?”

“Arachnid,” he repeats, without inflection.

Her braid shifts as she leans forward, her face lit from the window behind him as the red lightens, hints at strands of gold. “Spinnetod actually,” her light grey eyes lock meaningfully, flicker just for a second behind him in empathize. “I don’t think she’s hunting now, but if she’s using this place, it’s probably coming up and she’s scouting.”

Again, he tries to read her expression, werewolves, dragons, and now another species, unique in that he's never heard it before. She's perfected a - he wouldn't call it guileless, because there's too much teasing in it, but a tone, a look of _'I dare you not to believe me'._

He tilts his chin, shaking his head slightly as he's drawn in again. He's willing to admit there's a lot he doesn't know, and it stops him from dismissing...all of this, even if he holds out from truly accepting it all.

“And what does a Spinnetod hunt?” he asks drolly.

She drags out the word slowly, conspiratorially. “Men.”

He rubs at his eyes. “I need a drink.”

“Vampires are non-compatible,” she reassures, still in an undertone. 

“That’s reliving,” he still doesn’t drop his hand.

“If you knew _how_ they hunted, you wouldn’t doubt it.” She slaps her hands softly against her thighs. “Speaking of which...hungry?” 

* * *

She points out a copy of Charlotte’s Web when he puts her book back, but he dismisses it as conjecture. She shoots back he shouldn’t bother leaving a copy of Dracula, as there’s at least fifty in the library.

He assures her it never crossed his mind.

And truly, he’d likely leave something more inline with her choice, not a hint at species.

“Like what, Gatsby?” she wonders, distracted as they head down the stairs.

He stops briefly in surprise. “What makes you say that?”

She looks back over her shoulder, evaluating him thoughtfully. “What’s that quote? ‘We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.’”

He doesn’t have an answer. Once, those words spoke to something deep inside of him, always reflecting on his past, his youth, a time before he made irrevocable mistakes. Now, with what she’s shared with him – he’s not sure.

“I was thinking Alice in Wonderland,” he says instead, instead of touching on her guessing at his favorite author, and a novel he’s never understood his yearning for.

“Ah,” she makes a noise of deep agreement. “I’m not crazy, my reality is just different from yours.”

“I’m not surprised you empathize with the Cheshire Cat,” he teases, thinking to himself: ‘it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’ Even if he is fighting the current that’s trying to bring him back to the past.

They step into the kitchen basement. It’s a blend of Victorian and mid-century. A pale blue fridge with a click handle. A gas stove. Brick oven. Blackened stoned fireplace with cast iron rotisserie. There’s a long line of jars on the counters, spices, and cultivated herbs. In that it’s not unlike the apothecary it’s attached to.

Casey heads to the island’s assembly line, to a spread of Ruben pastrami sandwiches, coleslaw, garlic mushrooms, and a tin of chocolate cupcakes with white webbing icing. Casey points at the loaf of rye bread and then herself, the mushrooms, then him, and then gives a pointed look when she reaches the cupcakes.

He raises his brows, not sure what exactly she’s trying to communicate as he makes a cup of coffee from the coffee cart. He doesn’t need, or crave, hearty meals, though vampires do crave delicacy’s, caffeine, and above all else, alcohol. (Not above all else.)

The cook at the stove is built like a fighter, tall and solid, with strong arms, and strong hands. The flour on his half apron, and smell of fresh rye bread pins him as a baker as much as a cook. He’s seems busy grilling sandwiches, the cutting board out with a knife balanced precariously, leeks and parsley chopped fine on the board.

“Charlotte wants you to stick to the stew,” he turns around to point at Casey, taking the lid off a stew pot left simmering, ladling into a bowl.

Casey looks at the sandwiches wistfully. “Yeah probably,” she agrees. “Are you eating?” she turns towards Stefan.

He shakes his head. “I’m fine with coffee.” 

“Do you want any of the frou frou?” she gestures to the cream and sugar near her as she grabs a bottle of water.

“You don’t know?” he asks with dry surprise.

She slides the cream and sugar back to its original spot, as if retracting the offer. “There’s only so much knowledge I can keep track of.”

He holds up his cup to illustrate he'll drink it black.

The cook hands her a steaming bowl filled with barley, carrots, and chicken broth. He raises a bushy brow at her. “Any reasons you're on diet restriction?"

She looks up from the taking the measure of ingredients in the bowl. "I was sick yesterday," she shrugs as she grabs napkins and a spoon, tucking her water bottle into her elbow as she picks up the bowl with both gloved hands. “Gab this is Stefan, Stefan, Gab.”

They share a nod.

“That last one for you?” Casey gestures her chin towards the stove.

He shakes his head. “Got a few more.”

“We’ll be out there, if you want to join us?” she offers, nodding Stefan towards the wood pallet saloon doors.

They move into the dining room, that might have once been a cellar. The walls are limed over brick, and the ceiling is at a low 7 feet. There are scones above every table, carved in the same walnut wood. Some of the tables are small, only room for two people, others four, pushing six. It’s less communal than he expected, given the dining room at the Salvatore Boarding House. The guests are spread out, an older gentleman sitting with his back against the far wall, fixated on his stew. A guy probably in his late teens is eating his sandwich quickly, headphones in his ears, and head turned away from the room. The man and woman sitting together, cradling cups of coffee, are the only ones to shoot them evaluating glances, quick and non-direct, something habitual, and long coordinated.

When the doors swing shut the room darkens slighter without the brighter light from the kitchen.

Casey chooses her table near the couple, her mouth curled in amusement.

He asks her about Charlotte.

“She’s at the apothecary,” she shrugs.

He tries to guess if Charlotte mentioned her theory, her worries. In this he finds her hard to read.

She folds her napkin in her lap, scoots her chair forward on the cobblestone, and blows gently on her soup. 

The couple renew their conversation after neither Stefan nor Casey give them any notice.

The brunette, British, talks about visiting a friend named Slater, perhaps staying with him for a few weeks until they decide whether or not they’ll stay.

The man, who’s accent is harder to pinpoint, but something European, teases her love of windows.

“So, did you figure it out?” Casey looks up from spinning figure-eights with her spoon, as steam rises from the bowl. She nods towards the kitchen.

“Ruben sandwiches, mushrooms, and cupcakes?” He guesses.

She nods, widening her eyes as if he can read the secret in them.

He thinks he understands part of it. The cupcakes with the spiderweb design. He capitulates.

“Sand _witches_ ,” she drags out, then waves her hand. “Granted, the rye bread is a little more obscure.”

"You're going to try and convince me there's a conspiracy in the lunch menu?"

She opens her mouth, stops, and then shakes her head, her wrist temporarily halted. “You draw the line at _puns_?"

"I think I drew the line at _dragons,"_ he returns her look, exasperated and humored at the same time. 

"You know what? I'm going to introduce you to a Dämonfeuer," she quickly decides, leaning closer. "Look at the evidence, rye bread -"

"Which I'm guessing references rye ergot, in this fantasy.”

She smiles, head tilted curiously. “You _do_ know some Salem history.”

“And what are mushrooms?” He raises his brow, mockingly pointing at himself.

She pulls in a breath in preparation, savoring it, before, “garlic. _Garlic_ mushrooms.”

He shuts his eyes and laughs. 

“Okay," he holds out his palms. "What does _chicken soup_ represent?”

At that, she falters, plopping back into her seat. “Uh, melting pot? Like, mixed heritage?”

“So, this is a theory," he nods drolly.

“So is Pythagoras, _Pythagorean,_ whatever,” she mutters, returning to her soup.

Gab comes out to join them with his own platter of Ruben and coleslaw, and a second plate of cupcakes. Casey pulls further in, to make sure he has plenty of room to slide next to her.

Stefan gets up to refill his cup, and when he comes back Casey is asking him if Sofia has taught him the secret to her mulled wine.

He shakes his head as he digs in. “She’s old school. Recipes should stay in the family, and brews are women’s craft.”

“How close have you come to recreating it?” She asks, fully interested.

He smiles wryly. “She’d never admit it if I got it right.”

“So?” she rolls her eyes. “Experimenting will only lead to you developing a better palette, and you might discover it for yourself or develop something unique. Win, win.”

He begrudgingly looks encouraged.

“How’s school, anyway?”

He talks about the different desserts they’re working on. Both make a face at peach cobbler made the _wrong_ way, as if it were a bread pudding. Stefan is now certain Casey was raised in the South, even if her accent is seemingly purposefully obscure, musical, but hard to pinpoint. Regional accents aren’t as easy to guess as they used to be. Stefan has spent so many decades away from home, away from the accents he remembers, his Southern drawl is completely gone.

Gab elaborates why he’s staying at the Boarding House, the supply of cookbooks gathered here, the lost recipes. The woman upstairs, who might be a man hunting Spinnetod, said the books came from things people purposefully left behind. He’s not sure why people would leave behind their family history.

“No one else to leave it to. Family dies out, new generation isn’t interested, which –” he shakes his head gruffly. “I don’t get. But they leave it behind because they can’t bear to keep it, or they’re hoping someone will come along and appreciate them, use it instead of letting it die out. Too many things are lost because people wanted to keep them to themselves.” He smiles. “And I’m grateful. Orphans like us,” he softly elbows Casey, who’s expression flickers, something brittle flashing across her eyes as she pulls in a breath and doesn’t release it “we’d be cut off, but instead we can rediscover something that we can make our own.”

Casey bobs her head, eyes on her soup. 

She isn't a witch anymore - what ever she's been able to make her own, there are large parts of it at least, that she's lost. 

Stefan backtracks the conversation. Cuisine has changed a lot, he broaches, guessing at the recipes in those 200-year-old books, from cultural taste, to choice-cuts of meats, before trade allowed fruit and vegetables from incompatible seasons. He’s familiar with some of the rigor of culinary studies, and they both hold the conversation while Casey silently finishes her soup.

“Where’d you learn?” 

Florence. Rome. Paris. He doesn't mention the institutions, understanding that Gab is putting himself through culinary school. 

“What’s your specialty then?” Casey asks softly as she rejoins the conversation. 

He teases that she might not know traditional Florence dishes. Bistecca Fiorentina. Pappadelle Sulla Lepre.

She bites her lip, lashes shielding her eyes as she looks down. 

“Sha, I have to bust out the cherie to get that reaction,” Gab guffaws.

She glares at him, snatching a cupcake from the plate and starts pulling off her glove with extreme focus.

“Are you Italian?” Gab asks him. 

He looks away from Casey's blushing face, pulling back in his chair as he clears his throat. “My family came over from Florence. Are you from Louisiana?”

Gab’s mirth drops, but he nods back. “Born in New Orleans. We left when I was a kid. Not much of an accent left,” he shrugs, almost self-deprecatingly.

Casey looks up from where she’s peeling the paper from her cupcake, glancing at Gab’s expression thoughtfully. 

“I was last there in ’42,” Stefan offers, wondering at the mood. “No place like it.”

The man sitting at the next table over (who has been discretely listening to their conversation without facing them) turns in his chair, and disdainfully says, “Is that where you received your little ring, in service in New Or-leans?”

Stefan turns his head, eyes steady as he takes the measure of the man, who flicks his hair out of his eyes to glare haughtily, while the woman next to him shoots her companion a look of warning. He keeps the rest of his body relaxed, laying his hands flat, as the man – the other vampire – looks down at the ring and clenches his jaw.

Casey interjects, “I wouldn’t say it’s little,” peering down at the ring in mock-confusion. Stefan doesn’t look away from the man glaring at him.

“In service of?” Stefan asks him to clarify, all warmth leeched out of his voice, waiting. He’s met very few vampires who had daylight rings, and the ones without who have met him, usually toe around asking how he got it, plead, threaten, or fight.

He smiles back, mocking. “To the vampire king running New Orleans.”

Stefan waits a beat to glance at the man’s empty hand, then back up. “Is that what you tried to do?”

He sneers. “Do you have any idea how much older I am than you?”

“No,” Stefan answers, short and blunt as his female companion hisses “Trev, don’t pick a fight _here._ ”

He’s abstractedly aware of Casey as she pulls off a piece of her cupcake and plops it into her mouth. “Imagine that, fighting in a magical sanctuary. Never a dull moment with you, Stefan Salvatore.”

The woman blinks, hand reaching out for her companion’s forearm. “Stefan Salvatore? Lexi’s friend?”

Her hand tightens. “Knock it off,” she advises, before turning cat-like eyes to their table. “I’m a friend of Lexi’s as well. She tried to match us in...’89 I believe? Said you were one of the _good ones_ ,” the last words are more for the man next to her. “Forgive my friend here for being presumptuous.”

Stefan can’t help glancing at Casey, who looks up from her cupcake as if surprised to have his attention, as if she didn’t drop his name deliberately. And he accepts, that Lexi, who’s the oldest vampire he knows, probably knows her, and has tried to matchmake. 

“So, you haven’t worked for Marcel,” Gab questions, before Stefan can ask how well she knows Lexi.

“No. I don’t know who that is,” he admits. “Or that there was a _king_ in New Orleans.”

Gab pulls on his goatee. “I don’t think he was a king in those days. Not until he nearly eradicated the Rougarou 20 years ago. Then, he started subjugating witches.”

Casey looks at Stefan, a sparkle in her eyes as she mouths _werewolves._

He makes a face back, shaking his head at her. 

He sobers as he looks back to Gab, fits that into what he's already said. Mid-twenties, left New Orleans as a child, cut off from his family history, an orphan. 

“And he gives daylight rings to vampires in his...employ?” he asks, playing catch-up.

“To the ones who’ve been with him long enough or are particularly apt enforcers,” Gab declares, with a wealth of complex feeling underlining his words.

“A bit like Scar and the hyenas,” Casey murmurs, mulling over her own words as she sits back in her chair.

“Are the Mikaelsons Mufasa?” Gab rolls his eyes, shifting his chair, if for nothing else than to expel pent up energy.

There’s a visible reaction from the vampires Stefan is still aware of in his peripheral. They both still.

“If Mufasa didn’t really die,” Casey agrees, still picking pieces off her cupcake.

_Who are the Mikaelsons?_

Gab asks how Stefan earned his daylight ring.

“I didn’t.” He answers shortly. “There was a witch who knew the spell when I was turned.”

The male vampire must find that answer intolerable. He pushes his chair in and tells his companion he’ll be in his room. There’s an almost halted gesture to incline not just his head but his upper back in a bow. It’s an old social norm given his appearance. Unless he’s spent decades desiccated somewhere or kept himself separate from human society.

“From what I’ve heard, you have to be connected to Originals in some fashion, given the _original spell_ is guarded jealously,” Gab cracks his knuckles, looking down at his own calloused hands. “Ever have to fight for it?”

“Yes.” And he’s learned that the spell on the ring is also individualized to the vampire. It can’t be used, successfully, by another. 

He nods, but his good humor is gone, lost in talk of New Orleans. He picks up his plate and tells Casey he’ll catch up with her later.

Gab offers his hand to Stefan, grim, but friendly. Between Gene, Charlotte, and Gab, he’s never had so many witches, or warlocks, at a time, willing to reserve judgment. And Gab has reason not to. 

Casey picks up the two remaining cupcakes, places one in front of her and the other sliding towards Stefan.

“I apologize, again.” The woman interjects with a sigh, ruffling the spiky brown hair away from her cheek. She places her hands on the coffee cups but doesn’t rise. He wonders, with it being daylight, how limited she is on where she can go, and how she might not want to join her companion in his current mood. The other two diners have already left, and it’s only the three of them that remain.

“I thought you were fine,” Casey voices, with a telling look that she thinks the other woman doesn’t have anything to apologize for. Stefan sighs, and reaches for the chocolate cupcake.

“Yes, well, I’d still feel dreadfully uncomfortable if I didn’t,” she jokes, fidgeting with a sugar packet. 

“Then apology accepted,” though he agrees with Casey. Even though he’s not sure what’s motivating her to stay and if it’s isn’t serving something ulterior.

She introduces herself as Rose. 

Casey observes her a moment without reciprocating, instead offering her untouched cupcake.

“Bless be the peacemaker?” she waves, and when Rose smiles, surprised at the gesture, she stretches out to pass it to her. Casey uses the camaraderie to ask why it didn't work out, with Lexi's matchmaking. 

Rose and him glance at each other, evaluating each other for a blind date that never happened. She smirks sardonically, aim more towards herself. “I’ve always been more attracted to the men I shouldn't. Don’t know why. When Lexi said he was a good guy -” she shrugs, as if that was the death keel. 

Stefan lifts his brow slightly, still eating his cupcake. 

“It’s pretty common,” Casey declares, unscrewing her water bottle. “The tame the beast archetype. Appeal of aggression. Ideally that aggression turns on those who threaten you once you’ve romanced the beast, brought out that part that is ‘only soft for you’. Proven fidelity. A protector.”

Stefan furrows his brows, watching Casey's expression.

“Protector, huh? That’s what I’m attracted to? Not the abrasive jackass?” Rose ruefully picks at her own cupcake. 

Casey smiles sideways. “It seems counterintuitive, but instinct says the more aggressive, the better the protector. If you feel really unsafe, you'd probably go for the biggest jackass you could find.” There's something teasing in that last statement, something knowing as she looks at Rose. 

Rose glances away. "I take it you don’t agree with this tame the beast archetype?”

Stefan waits upon her answer. Multiple times last night she had relied on his help, when she was hurt, when she felt unsafe. What drove that trust, or was it coincidence of him having been the one that was there? And sharing everything else, circumstance again? Or was it worse, what she saw in him? 

Casey doesn't answer the question directly. “You’re close with your friend,” she states as fact.

“Yes,” Rose agrees, questioning where this is going, but meaning it.

“So...let’s say you found this beast. You fell in love. Your friend needs help, something serious, but something stops you from being there. This man, whose only soft for you, only prioritizes you, can you trust him to be there for him? For the people you care about? What if _he_ feels he’s choosing between caring for you, and helping your loved ones? Can you trust him to respect your feelings outside of him? Your choices?”

Rose doesn’t answer.

Casey seems to shrug, lifting her drink for a sip. “Personally," she pauses, looking down at her water "I think you should have taken Lexi up on her offer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Face Claims: Charlotte – Claire Coffee. Adalind from Grimm.  
> Gabriel – Howard Charles. Porthos from The Musketeers.  
> Rose’s defense of Damon to Jeremy bugged me, so I’m criticizing a little.  
> Rougarou is the Cajun werewolf. 
> 
> next: come what may  
> Casey leaves Richmond behind.


	4. come what may

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Canon Changes: I’m changing Stefan’s ‘age’ to 19 instead of 17. 19 because in the Civil War the draft age was 20, and I want to keep that dynamic. I’m going to introduce the idea that the vampire change has some physiology effects that ages up/alters them when they transition, but otherwise pretend the characters didn’t age.  
> In this chapter I mess with the lore of werewolf venom. Also, why vampires need to be invited in.
> 
> Previously: Stefan glimpses at a supernatural community and gets to know Casey through observation.

_“Suppose [a person] had a basket full of apples and, being worried that some of the apples were rotten, wanted to take out the rotten ones to prevent the rot spreading. How would he proceed? Would he not begin by tipping the whole lot out of the basket? And would not the next step be to cast his eye over each apple in turn, and pick up and put back in the basket only those he saw to be sound, leaving the others? In just the same way, those who have never philosophized correctly have various opinions in their minds which they have begun to store up since childhood, and which they therefore have reason to believe may in many cases be false. They then attempt to separate the false beliefs from the others, so as to prevent their contaminating the rest and making the whole lot uncertain. Now the best way they can accomplish this is to reject all their beliefs together in one go, as if they were all uncertain and false. They can then go over each belief in turn and re-adopt only those which they recognize to be true and indubitable.” ―_ **_René Descartes_ **

**Chapter four: come what may**

The plan was to take Stefan home as soon as she woke. After that, she wasn’t sure. Would Grayson share Stefan's secret? Let Liz in on the conspiracy? Parts anyway.

Though Liz was Miranda's best friend, they - John, Grayson, and Miranda - shared nothing about the danger Elena is in, any plans to protect the town; had treated her like someone in need of protection, not as an ally. Would Grayson continue that, or without Miranda, would he reach out? 

Maybe she had more than one reason to nab Stefan Salvatore, until she can figure out what to tell him, think up the right strategy. Showing up in daylight might not be enough. 

She guesses, _guesses,_ that Grayson is thankful for Stefan's assistance, and would be willing to stay mum until the bodies turn up, but the best way to gauge the new situation would be to show up at the Sheriff's station, give her statement, see if her tea or coffee, or whatever they offer tastes floral, and watch for any seeds of distrust, of hidden wariness. 

It won't tell her exactly, what she's leaving behind, but it will help her frame her parting advice to Stefan. _Thanks for your help, sorry for throwing a spanner into your life. Road to true love never runs smoothly and all that._

The plan gets delayed. First by Charlotte. Then by a gnawing ache for food. Then by Sofia, handing off the only meaningful contents of Marie’s vehicle.

Casey’s purse. 

She didn't leave it behind. Didn't throw it in a dumpster. 

Hmm...

She dumps the contents on the floor of her room, spreads the pieces with white gloved fingertips. 

Stefan thumbs through one of the journals on her bedside table, her notes tucked in as she tries to piecemeal a remedy for cursed scars. She hadn’t looked up but had been faintly aware of him in her peripheral when he moved the chair closer to the bed, so that he wouldn’t block the light streaming in from the window, illuminating her little pile.

Nothing new. Nothing missing. 

She riffles through her wallet, twisting the little plastic card of her counterfeit ID, between her fingers. 

It would be smart, to place a tracking spell on something that stays constant on a mark's day to day. 

She had it made, had picked Casey Shannon, long before she made contact with Marie’s coven. There's opportunity. 

It's not obvious, like a pin, or a piece of jewelry, things that take spells easier. And if it's going to be anything it's more likely that than loose barrettes, chap stick, sticks of gum, as if this is a James Bond novel. 

It doesn't feel like anything. So either it's fine, or her relationship with magic is more severed than she imagined, that she can't even feel it in her hands. A void. 

Casey pulls the knife hidden in her belt and cuts the seams of the inner lining, just to be sure, _wanting_ to find something obvious. 

“This person who attacked you...do you think they’ll try again?” Stefan asks her, wondering if that’s what’s driving her intensity to dismantle her own belongings.

“Unlikely,” she murmurs, distracted, the purse now flayed, threads broken and unraveled. 

“What is it you’re looking for?” 

“Something that isn’t mine. Something that is but feels off,” she purses her lips. “Something that points to how she tracked me so I can at least prevent her, or someone else, doing it again.”

He pauses, something complicated she isn’t quick enough to grasp in his eyes as he tilts his eyes away. “You didn’t kill her.”

Her breath stutters, barely a moment, barely noticeable.

The rubber banded stack of money sits between them among the wreckage. An almost wergild for Marie’s trespass. A petty revenge. Her retaliation. 

“No,” she agrees.

_Will you ask why I didn’t? Ask if I wanted to?_

_Ask how it felt, to still be bound in ropes when I caught the blade in my hand, how it sliced through my palm instead of my heart, how the blood poured, dripped in red tears._

_What it felt like to stand over Marie, knowing that if she had the magic, she could have forced her to confess why, how, who else was behind this. With the right power, turn mercy into leverage, forced Marie to never move against her._

Instead, it's only the upper hand in a fight. One fight. And if she met Marie's rage with her own, if she lived through the poison, she couldn’t afford the enmity of a coven - no matter that it _looked_ like Marie was acting outside of their knowledge. 

Stefan joins her on the floor, squatting with his elbows on his knees, the sun highlighting dark blond in his hair. He surveys the same pile of seemingly innocuous items, tries to offer a sounding board. “Could it have been a locator spell?”

She stretches her back. “Nope, those won’t work on me.”

He takes note of her certainty, but doesn’t ask how that works, if she’s sure it’s infallible. Her eyes are brighter when she’s drawn into conversation, able to escape being drawn deeper into her own mind. She gives her full attention to everything, sparks through interplay, dialogue, banter. Without it she grows distant, more motionless, more desolate.

“Could she have tracked your phone?”

The burner is dismantled burner, the battery pulled clean. “Not that I could tell...”

At least there’s nothing really there to find. She can easily discard it for another.

There’s no pictures, no contacts, no call log. She’s still in the crossroads of one life and another, not sure what she can take with her. What relationships would she, could she, hold onto?

Stefan frowns. “How many ways can witches track people?”

How many ways are there to hurt someone? Potentially? Endless. _“More ways_ than I can counter. But if I think like that, I’ll go _mad,_ ” and a little bit of Alice peeks through on the end. Or perhaps she's been the Mad Hatter all along.

Mad with paranoia. Feeling eyes in every shadow, following in dreams, watching from mirrors, windows, every corner.

“Then there’s the other option,” she pulls up her right knee, rests her arm across it so she can drop her chin. She sighs. “It might have just been rumor. Someone saw me, knew who I was, moved it through the grapevine...”

Then, they likely knew she was staying here. Knew her connection with Charlotte, banked on her friendship even.

She drops her forehead against her arm. “I never appreciated how _aggravating_ it is to not know something.”

Stefan hums.

She lifts her head, eyes narrowed.

He holds up his hands, lips pressed to hide a smile. “I’m agreeing with you." Completely. 

* * *

Charlotte looks through the contents of her purse, while Casey distracts herself with weaving a strand of dried lavender through the end of her braid. Weeks ago she could have done it herself, or offered something as Charlotte and her working through the magic together.

She breathes deeply, pulls the soothing fragrance into her lungs. For a while her skin, her scalp, is going to be more sensitive, too sensitive for fragrance in her shampoo, conditioner, soap, lotion, detergent. She already feels itchy from sleeping in her – well Stefan’s – sweaty clothes. That had been dumb. 

“There’s nothing here,” Charlotte pronounces, dropping her hands.

A part of her, just a small part, is relieved. If she had gone over her things, found nothing, felt nothing, and Charlotte easily pointed to the culprit, it would have been demoralizing. She had placed her things in Stefan’s hands, just to make sure nothing felt off. The rest of her knows not having the answer is going to burrow under her skin. 

_Why this event? Why Mystic Falls? Why, Marie?_

She finishes her braid again without commenting, chooses to ignore this topic altogether. “So, what dietary restrictions am I looking at?”

Charlotte hands the purse back as she glides towards the workbench. 

“No sugar,” Charlotte reminds her. She nods. Stefan raises his brows at her out of the corner of her eye, not noticeable enough to bust her. The cupcake has already made her queasy, which is why she gave the other one to Rose.

“I gave you the list, so you know what to eat,” she runs through the basics, points out the watercress for iron, the packets she’s bundled together to pour into a blender for some truly unappetizing smoothies. It will take at least a week to get her body to realign, to make sure it’s properly absorbing vitamins and minerals, for heavier fare not to twist her stomach.

“How much water have you had?”

“24 ounces?” she guesses.

“Triple it, quadruple it, quintuple it.”

24 x 5... Isn't 120 ounces a day a little much?

“I think they call that _drowning_.” Belatedly, she hears how macabre that joke is, given...

She turns her head, so she won’t see Stefan’s expression. 

Way to be heartless. Way to forget so easily. 

“You should be drinking now."

Casey bites at her peeling lips, nodding mutely. 

Charlotte squints at the unusual reaction, picking up on the change in mood. Casey pre-empts her so she doesn't sniff it out, drudge up the faux pas she's trying to bypass. “I usually get that urge when in your company."

“Really?” She asks, faking amazement. "That’s interesting.” She drawls. “I wonder if I have enough lotion for those rashes to spare...”

Casey fights the inevitable fold. “I guess I’ll just get calamine at the store.”

“If you think it would work just as well,” she simmers.

Neither blink. 

She wouldn't. 

But...

Casey pouts, addressing her defeat to the ceiling. “I’ll ‘quintuple’ it,” she repeats obediently.

“You better,” Charlotte easily returns to her task, naming the items she's placing in the crate. “Fever reducers. Pain killers. Bandages. Lotion. Soap. You should use for your hair as well.”

“Can’t I just pick-up something hypo-allergenic?” She frowns at the end of her braid that Charlotte plaited for her. It's already going to be a pain combing it out with an aching hand, but drying it out with soap as well?

Charlotte waves it off. “You can put up with it for two weeks.” Then she hesitates on the last items. “This is to check your vitals,” she announces, somber. Charlotte carefully, too carefully, sets them into the crate, the glass faintly tinkling.

“I wrote down the instructions. What you need to watch out for. What normal glomerular filtration rate you need to hit.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she answers slowly, asking Charlotte what’s going on.

Charlotte continues to stare down at the inside of the crate.

“For your kidneys,” Stefan answers, after a pregnant pause. It’s the first thing he’s said in Charlotte’s company, which up 'til now, she had found strange.

Charlotte turns to him. “And a bilirubin test,” she trails off leadingly, testing him.

Stefan’s eyes are locked with Charlotte. He's frowning. “To check for enzymes the liver cells release in response to damage.”

Charlotte glances at Casey, ruminating over something, a distance falling over her expression, her voice. “She has to watch out for liver damage. Kidneys too. She can’t skip meals, even if she has no appetite. Even if the last time she ate made her vomit. Right now, she’s starved for nutrition. Fluids are vital. I’ve written everything I know that could possibly go wrong and what to do.”

She doesn’t know what Charlotte _thinks_ is going on, but Stefan isn’t her nursemaid, or her caretaker, or even her friend. “Char _,_ Stefan met me _last night.”_

“Most people die when they’re ill because they dehydrate. Call her out if she brushes anything off. If she’s in pain she won’t tighten up like most people, she’ll try not to move her body, drop her shoulders, keeps her muscles lax. If you grab her hand, and she keeps it loose, then it’s bad and you need to–”

“He doesn’t need to do anything,” she interrupts again, throwing her hands up, purposefully throwing herself into movement to show just how _fine_ she is. That's personal, too personal, things she didn't even know about herself. _Is this what I do to people?_ No wonder people want to murder me. 

“And it’s not that serious,” she glares at Charlotte, though her words are for Stefan.

“It is that serious,” Charlotte swings to her, suddenly severe. “Which is my point! You need someone. If they have vampire blood all the better!”

Casey rocks back. The words _'if they have vampire blood all the better'_ echo through her. 

What had Charlotte gleamed from the knife?

Charlotte drops her voice. “How it didn’t _kill_ you-” she chokes, bloodless as she tightens her lips from saying more. 

Casey unclenches her fists, uncertain how to respond. How it didn’t kill her... Is she saying the poison damaged her in a way that only vampire blood might heal? 

She worries at her lip. “I’ve uh, built up a resistance to iocane powder –”

Charlotte glares. “ _Don’t_." Don't deflect. Don't joke. "You may not think much of the witch who used that knife against you, but someone gave it to _her_ to kill you. And they gave her a nearly guaranteed killing blow. I studied that fucking knife. The curse hadn’t been inlayed more than a _week_ , which means it was _for you_. And it was _dark._ Your nerves would have been screaming like you were on fire –”

“I know what it felt like," she grits, low and harsh, telling Charlotte to _stop._

“Look,” she starts again, heavier, the anger to cover out her worry, draining. “Look at it from my perspective. You were almost killed, were dealt with something that needed _urgent attention_ if you were going to _stop it from killing you._ And you had her phone. You had _a_ phone, but you didn’t call me. You didn’t call me to break the curse. Instead, you-” she tosses her hand, waiting for Casey to tell her what she was thinking.

Casey doesn’t have a good answer. It’s...the magic of Mystic Falls is complicated. Draws you in like a web. She told Charlotte before, not to traipse in it, not to be tempted no matter what she hears. And that was a worry, a distant worry when she had Marie’s phone in her hand.

More pressing was not knowing if the wound would kill her in minutes or hours.

She didn’t want to call her friend, putting it on her to save her, when all she’d be doing is pointing her in the direction of her body. Unloading that trauma on her.

She also didn’t want to drag anyone in if Marie wasn’t working alone, if there was going to be someone waiting, watching at the bridge. 

And also, if she's being brutally honest, she's used to fighting alone. 

Charlotte sighs, wiping her eyes. “I’ve already shared this theory with him,” she gestures to Stefan, who’s watching them with his hands fisted in his pockets, an uncomfortable audience to Charlotte’s anger and Casey’s hurt, Charlotte’s anguish, and Casey’s guilt. “But...maybe they wanted you to intervene so that you’d break your vow. If he,” she jerks her head to Stefan “was supposed to be there, and you were cursed with blood poisoning bound to werewolf venom, then that was to stop you from taking vampire blood. Casey, doesn't that sound...orchestrated?”

She knows she’s right.

“You don’t even know if this is about whoever you saved, or about you, or both. And you can’t...” she bites her tongue, stops herself.

“I can’t what?” Casey asks, resigned to whatever is coming, what Charlotte doesn’t want to say.

She inhales bracingly, hands reaching out to grip the sides of the work bench. “You can’t...pretend you still belong here.” Her face crumbles in apology as Casey stiffens her shoulders. She spews the rest out, hating herself for having to say it. In some way, what she’s been avoiding saying since Casey underwent her ritual. “You know it’s too dangerous. You had to have considered this as your opportunity to _pretend_ you had been taken out. To let Casey Shannon, die, and create a new life where you don’t have to constantly look over your shoulder. And instead,” she pulls in a hard breath “you came back to Richmond.”

Casey stares out the window, hands clasped behind her back, gripping her wrists so tight she can feel the burn of ropes, like an imprint deeper than skin. At least she knows now, where this conversation is headed. Why Charlotte is stuffing everything she can into a care package. Why she wants Stefan to look after her health. Most of Charlotte’s time, when she’s not apprenticing, is helping people detox. It’s how she met Casey.

And Casey still feels that connection, that gratitude for supporting her. But it’s a shadow over Charlotte’s perception of her now.

That Casey is inviting danger. That she’s self-destructive. 

That she needs to let go. 

And that she needs to leave.

* * *

“Where’d you learn about filtration rates and liver enzymes?” She asks Stefan, eyes screwed tight while she fights the urge to vomit, again.

He gently extracts the last duffel bag from her hand, stows it alongside the others, and the crate, into the trunk. 

“Do you really want to talk about this?” he asks quietly. This as opposed to something else.

“Ab-so-lutely,” she sings, jaw ticking as she focuses on breathing through her nose. Way to show she _doesn’t_ need help. _Please, something to fill the cobwebs in my mind._

He moves to sit on the edge of her trunk, hands flat and framing his hips.

“I tried medical school, once.”

That surprises her. “When was this?”

“1946.”

“The GI Bill?” she guesses.

He smiles slightly, self-deprecating. “I thought, after the war, if I accepted my limitations, I could handle it.”

She opens her mouth, then closes it again, not sure what to say. He had been an ambulance driver in the war, had seen to wounded. Did he enter med school because, impossibly, he had controlled it for a time? It doesn’t compute with what she knows about him.

_There’s plenty you don’t know._

“That was a long time, to still remember it,” she murmurs, curious.

She takes the seat next to him in the open trunk, the crate sharp and unyielding against her back. 

“Vampires have long memories,” he shrugs.

She knows it doesn’t work that way. To remember something he couldn’t put into practice, so many years later, speaks to passion and yearning.

“Do you think you’ll try again?” 

He frowns, looking down at his hands. “I don’t think that’s in the cards for me anymore."

She has the urge to touch him. Her palm between the wings of his shoulder blades.

She doesn’t indulge it, in reaching out, but instead leans to knock her shoulder very gently against his. She sways back before he glances over at her, looking up from the daylight ring he twirls against his knuckle.

“I don’t know,” she declares, considering. “You could apprentice like Charlotte.”

His brows furrow.

“It’s not a traditional degree, or title, but it is a practice, and there’s a plethora of medical knowledge you could learn.” He doesn’t say anything. “In places like this, in the enclaves, the apothecarist _is_ the doctor. And you could work around the blood. It’s mostly knowing remedies, more than actual wounds. Knowing what different curses look like, poisons.” She turns over her hand.

He looks down at her hand, the wound hidden by a bandage and a white glove. “ _Are_ there any vampire apothecarists?” he asks, like the start of a joke. 

She smirks, knowing which one to mention. “Yes. Pearl, from back in 1864.”

A memory, or a different time slips over his eyes. “Pearl. Is she one of the vampires in the tomb?”

Maybe she shouldn't have brought it up. “Yes, she is.”

He nods absently, weighed now, with the knowledge of one face, one identity, to the circumstances of the tomb vampires. 

She turns her gaze back to the road, swinging her feet slightly as the tips of her toes touch the pavement.

“If...you prefer to stay in human society then there are ways you could look like you’re aging, with magic. Maybe be a....pharmacist?” her voice turns higher at the end, unsure. “I mean, you don’t have to...jump into this,” this society he knows little or nothing about, about 160 odd years trying to fit in the human one “to get a version of something you want.”

“Something I want,” he repeats, muses, brows sardonic, but tone like it’s something he barely remembers. 

It's a reflection she knows well.

* * *

He offers to drive. It’s easy to allow him. She might have made the journey, part of the journey, last night, but that was backwards and in the dark. He doesn't need to comment on her wane appearance, though it's there in his offer. She doesn't have to pretend her right grip, and her wrists, still ache when she touches anything, though it's there in her answer. 

“How did I never know about this place?” Stefan wonders, glancing at the boarding house, at the sliver of the apothecary visible behind the alley.

“The apothecary or the boarding house?” she asks as she drops two water bottles in the cupholders. 

“Either?” He focuses on the road, doesn't look down at her arrangement, the potential of Charlotte's instruction - to them both - hanging between them if he did. 

“Why, thinking about turning the Salvatore Boarding House into the Salvatore’s Supernatural Sanctorum Boarding House?”

“Well...I wouldn’t name it that _,”_ he defends.

“Stefan Salvatore’s Super-Secret Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Supernatural Sanctorum?” she offers.

And what would that acronym sound like?” his green eyes dare her before turning back to the road. 

“Sssssss.” She hisses through her teeth. 

He closes his eyes, faking pain and secondhand embarrassment. 

She ponders what a Salvatore Boarding House would really be like. Hadn’t they opened their door to other vampires, not even knowing why Rose, or Rebekah, or Sage had felt comfortable? Hadn’t multiple vampires just assumed?

“Well, you’re familiar with some sanctuary magic,” she starts with.

He raises his brow at her. 

“It’s one of the principles of having to invite vampires inside,” she explains.

His brows furrow. “I thought it was –” he stops, hesitates “about not inviting evil in.”

“What?" She makes a face. "No," she denies vehemently. 

He's curious at her reaction. “Then what is it?”

She grabs one of the water bottles, looks down as she twists off the lid while she thinks. “It’s older than vampires. It’s – well _some of it_ is magic of the hearth and home, but it’s to prevent the spirits who linger on from entering a domain they haven’t been invited into. Just their presence alone will make the occupants more susceptible to maladies and misfortune. So, it’s a sanctuary linked to thresholds. Vampires fall under it because to become a vampire you had to die. Actually die. Not mostly dead or partly dead, dead-dead. You crossed the threshold of the veil, so you can no longer freely cross the threshold of a domicile.”

She doesn’t say that vampires are basically parasitic spirits inhabiting their own corpse. It’s a disturbing way of looking at it, but that’s why sanctuary magic acts the way it does. 

Stefan runs his hands across the bottom part of the steering wheel, staring out at the road pensively.

“How many people know that?”

She twists her mouth. “How many people care? Where’d you hear it was about inviting evil? A witch?” He nods. “Well it’s wrong, but pretty on brand. I haven’t met a witch who wasn’t at least _a little_ self-righteous. Even when they know they _should_ question their prejudice, there’s so much of it they don’t realize how much they’ve built their understanding on. Especially their relationship with magic.”

 _“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things_ ,” Stefan quotes Descartes, in-tune with her meaning, something she's tried to explain so many times. 

He glances over, feels her gaze just as she skirts it away before they can connect.

“If you used to be a witch, does that mean you fall under the category of...a little self-righteous?” he teases.

“Noooo,” she denies, surprised at her own smile. “I _try_ not to be,” she answers, much more honestly. “I-”

It’s instinct to cut herself off, but mostly, she’s rarely felt the urge to try to explain it at all. Not since the ritual. Not even to Charlotte. Her voice drops to a hush, strangled slightly as it stops and starts. “I had the ability to...see through other people, and... see through myself. Let’s say the basket of apples were tipped over for me.”

He nods in understanding. “I think I’m still sorting through mine,” he muses, ruefully.

She huffs on a laugh.

Tip of the iceberg, Stefan.

But then, he’s already realized that too.

“There’s this place in New Orleans, the St. James Infirmary. Is that magic similar to the boarding house you were staying in?”

“The St. James Infirmary?” she repeats, wondering if the conversation earlier has him reflecting on New Orleans.

He tries to read is she’s kidding by repeating it, given how famous the site is. 

She waves it off. “I mean, as a sanctuary it’s a league above the Brookland. If Marie had been tracking me, when I passed the threshold of St. James, the wards would have dispelled it, distinguished it from...” her throat closes on _‘my own magic’_. She frowns, rubbing her arm through her gloves to help with the itch. “From innate magic. Like your daylight ring. If you stood in a patch of sunlight, the ring would still work. How does it know which magic to block and which to allow to protect the patrons? That’s what’s fascinating. Most people call it a ‘magic free’ zone, but if the wards _truly_ created a magic free zone, then daylight rings wouldn’t work. Vampires would die of whatever killed them when they turned as they stepped through the door."

His hands slacken on the wheel. “That’s possible?”

Travelers have been trying to create one for two thousand years. Some have succeeded, but the barriers can never stay up for long. “In New Orleans?” She steers her answer, to not get into the travelers. “It would be a kamikaze strategy. Messing with the magic of New Orleans at that level would be... _really_ dangerous. Sink the city level dangerous.”

And they don’t have the power for it. Not unless they used something like the power of the Harvest Girls, delved deep into sacrificial magic.

“How bad is it in New Orleans?” and there’s a weight to his question, as he wonders if the New Orleans witches are in a desperate enough situation that they would attempt it.

She runs her tongue over her teeth as she thinks about it, takes another sip of water to sooth her throat.

“It’s...alright. For the average tourists. Marcel keeps the vampires in enough order that they keep their human kills low. They spread flyers in the streets for young people to come to them, ply them with booze, give them a party. Partake. Compel. Send them away thinking New Orleans is the place to be and they should spend their money like it’s no tomorrow.”

She finishes off the water bottle.

“And for the locals? People like Gab?” He wonders.

“Well...the vampires are like an occupying force. One that doesn’t think much of the dignity of the locals. If they contest it, they die. If they keep their head down, they might be left alone. If they profit, they live with it. For witches, he’s the boot on their neck. Werewolves in the city, if found out, are killed outright. Marcel has this thing about not killing kids, which allows him to justify the rest. So, when he had the power for it twenty years ago, he went biblical. Killed the adults, the elders, the fighters in the packs, and left the kids. Left the ones that hadn’t triggered their curse. He sent the baby of two leaders he killed into foster care.” She wonders at that. If after holding her he didn’t want to envision ever having to kill the adult version of her. Or if it was just another way of nullifying a future enemy. “A few months ago he enacted a curse for the ones still living in the bayou outside the city, to live as wolves for every night but the full moon.”

“Because they weren’t kids any longer.” His brows pinch. “How did he get a witch to do that?”

“Well, she’s a horrible person,” she answers blithely. “But I guess the same reason other witches work for him even with what he’s done. She found profit in it.”

He mulls it over, hands skimming the steering wheel back and forth. 

“Are werewolves that deadly to vampires?” He wonders after a thoughtful pause.

Did she tell him the danger of a werewolf bite already? She doesn't think so. 

“How did...?”

“What you said about werewolf venom,” he stops. “Which sounds ridiculous.”

She cocks her head. “That’s a witch’s doing actually. Ingenious. She literally modified the werewolf curse by bloodline so that the protection would follow hereditarily. _She saved the species._ It’s rare, really, really rare to meet a werewolf who doesn’t carry venom. The one without that defense were decimated.”

He shakes his head, looking amused and something else as he smiles. “I feel like every conversation with you is this revelation.”

She smirks. “Thank you.”

He huffs a laugh, short and quiet, green eyes amused. “Werewolves. Doppelgängers. The comet. The tomb. Katherine. Spinnetods, I don’t... I still can’t tell if you’re joking about dragons, but...venom. Why venom?”

She frowns to herself. “Did you ever ask this before?”

His brow lifts. “Before?” he asks wryly.

“When you found out about werewolves,” she closes her eyes, trying to remember. “Damon was... skeptical. Thought if he hadn’t seen one yet then they didn’t exist. I remember the Don Chaney jokes. You knew someone wasn’t a vampire but had supernatural strength and speed and pretty easily accepted the possibility. But...I don’t remember you asking questions about venom. Or even caring how the bite worked.” She squints, something else occurring to her. “Don’t wolf spiders have venom?”

He exhales slowly. “A werespiderwolf?”

She can't believe... “You know,” she clears her throat “I’m used to seeing behind the curtain, but do you want to lose all your sense of wonder? To not get moments like this, where you literally just said _werespiderwolf?”_

He drops his head slightly on a sigh, voice desert dry. “I’ll take my chances."

“Fineeee," she capitulates, lips twitching. "It’s not...actual venom. It’s just something unique to their saliva when they’re a wolf. It’s actually a modification of the rabies virus that works symbiotically with the host, only effecting vampires.” She shrugs. “Werewolf venom became the colloquial.”

“So, a werewolf bite can kill a vampire,” he taps his fingers against the bottom of the wheel as he thinks it over. 

“Yes.”

“Does it follow the symptoms of rabies, for the vampire?”

She thinks about Rose, and Damon in particular. “Yes.”

He frowns, not needing to imagine far what a rabid vampire would look like. 

“Is there a cure?” he looks over at her as he asks.

She hesitates. The answer to that is attached to things he doesn’t know yet. Shouldn’t know yet? 

“Do you think I’m taking something away from you, by telling you? Is it better for you to find this out on your own? I mean, you always seem to investigate when you need to know something, and find the answers for yourself...If I deprive you of the need to do that, maybe you'll miss something important because you didn't know to _keep_ asking.” 

“Casey,” he interrupts, eyes clear and understanding. He shakes his head. “You don’t have to tell me.” And he says it so finally, that she knows he’s talking about all of it, not just cures for werewolf bites. In this moment, he means it. When Damon is bitten, he won't. When he learns about the Sun and Moon curse, he won't. 

So, she can't believe him. Sweet now, but with a bitter aftertaste. 

She mulls it over, wondering if her worries are right, or if it's just an excuse. A regret after the course has been laid. 

_What am I letting you return to, Stefan Salvatore? How many ways have I fucked up your life?_

If you're going to live, shouldn't you know more, can you survive the crumbs doled out by fate? The bit of fact wrapped in fiction?

She rubs at her thighs, careful not to put too much pressure with her right hand. 

“I guess the butterfly has already flapped it’s wings. I told you things you wouldn’t find out for months.” She pauses. “It’s just the cold light of day, I guess.” A lot has changed, since last night.

She turns sideways in her seat to face him directly. “Yes, there’s a cure. Very out of reach at the moment, but...with magic, there’s always something that counters something else.”

“Like cursed werewolf saliva." 

“Or daylight rings,” she agrees.

He extends his hand as he looks at the blue stone and silver inlay, voice changing as he recalls something. “Why did your friend Gab call it the original spell?”

She blinks, wondering if the universe is doing this to her. She sedately goes through the motions of twisting off the cap of her water bottle, taking enough gulps to quince her dry mouth before twisting the cap back on. Stefan looks over at her when she finishes, annoyingly patient. “Okay,” she wipes the corner of her mouth. “There’s original with a lower-case spelling and Original with a capital. Daylight rings are Original with a capital. _An_ Original – hear the capital - spell.”

“And what is original,” he changes his voice to mimic “’with a capital’?”

“With a capital it means the Original witch who created the Original spell and made the _Origin-als._ The origin of the modern vampire species, and the paterfamilias, and matriarch of the six sirelines.” 

“Modern vampires?” he repeats, taken back. 

She waves her hand like she’s reintroducing herself. “Man behind the curtain.”

He shakes his head, this time without ducking his head when he smiles. “So, there is more than one type of vampire?” He asks with interest.

She twists her water bottle in her hands. “Only if you’re talking to someone pedantic. Which I am.” She admits, ruefully. “It’s just - there are other creatures that drink blood to survive, going as far back as Mesopotamia. What characterizes the vampire – your vampire – from creatures before it is,” she starts to tick off with her fingers “you don’t shapeshift, feed off of energy, or consume flesh. You have a body, not a shade. You had to die to transition. You have fangs that extract. You have the human visage and the vampire one. You have the power to compel, to see into someone’s mind. You’re hurt or weakened by sunlight and vervain. You’re killed by a wooden weapon to the heart. Your blood can heal others. If digested prior to death is triggers the transition. That basically makes up the modern vampire, and those weaknesses and strengths and characteristics come from the Original family. But there are variants that don’t click all those boxes, failures and successes that are older, so I just find” she uses air quotes “’the Original family’ kind of a pretentious. The Original witch is such an ironic name because she’s a plagiarizer.”

Stefan’s mouth parts, then closes, rethinking the questions that are tumbling through his head. “Okay,” he starts slowly, digesting it “but why _create_ vampires?”

She smiles in sympathy, hearing his own feelings in the question. She keeps her eyes on her twisting water bottle. “Because she didn’t want to lose any more of her children,” she answers in an undertone.

He draws back in surprise. “They were a family?”

“Still are, though the bonds are pretty strained right now.”

His brows pull together. “I’ve never heard of any of this. I mean, I’ve heard a rumor, a theory that a witch created the spell, but...I thought it was something that had gone wrong.”

She nods agreeably. “You might have known more, once,” she admits without looking at him. “It’s a skill of an Original, to compel other vampires. They have their own reasons, which have likely changed on different whims, to hide their own mythos, to make enemies...even friends, forget them.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, reading her. “Casey,” he hesitates, sighing her name. She feels it sit in her chest.

She tries to smile as she looks over at him, dropping her feet back to the floorboard. “Heard any rumors on where the vampire species originated?”

“Transylvania,” he guesses, his brows still heavy, voice not quite meeting the pitch for a joke.

She shakes her head. “Older.” As in, older than Vlad. “Think something so ridiculous you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Somewhere very sunny," he muses. 

She gestures for him to make a more substantial guess, so he throws out with the same cavalier, not even trying when he has no idea. 

"Australian Outback." 

“Less ridiculous.”

He thinks on it more seriously, his knuckles briefly touching his mouth as he takes it off the steering wheel to shift in his seat. 

“Delphi?”

“Delphi?” she parrots, a bit thrown.

He shrugs. She’s staring at him without blinking, waiting for him to say why and _how the hell_ he made that guess.

“It’s where Zeus placed the Omphalos stone to mark the center of the world,” he smiles wryly. “I thought it would be a hell of a coincidence, given the Oracle of Delphi myth,” he looks at her pointedly.

“That’s...incredibly intuitive,” she admits. It’s not...right, but it’s not wrong. “Think closer to home.”

“Closer to Mystic Falls?” he asks with a touch of sarcasm.

She waits for him to look over and raises her brow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Delphi being the place for the origin of vampires not being a wrong answer is because I’m making that the place where Silas and Amara became immortal. Haven’t decided yet if Stefan should be a Silas doppelgänger.


End file.
